For some time I’ll continue to update the NGO Blog, it is receiving the most (merited) attention, belonging to automatic statistics of our provider. And I still believe: it is important for us, the Civil Society, to know each other as much as possible.

My two blogs Humanitarian Texts and Economy and Society will receive some random entries, not daily, but belonging to what is presenting itself. From now on I want them with more positive news, showing less critics but mainly progress, reflection and development.

For three years now I showed every day another person on this People’s blog. For every one I have seen special qualities, being a help for this humanity, some making us just happy, but every time I feel admiration. This work was my way thanking life for all what we humans are able to do.

The goal was to let us be aware: wouwwh, we are a real good humanity, there is so much hidden quality on this planet. I want this be acknowledged.

I want make us feel: this humanity is a good one! We are rich of development, rich of creativity, of devotion to life … let’s continue to sing the song of life. It’s what nourishes our soul !

Heidi

Hermawati (born 1956) is a volunteer teacher in the tiny island Pulau Burung off South Kalimantan, Indonesia. This 49-year-old mother of three children has been providing free schooling for the island’s poor children for 15 years, despite lacking proper education herself, using her own meager financial resources to build a modest school building and purchase learning materials. Her efforts have encouraged more parents to send their children to school.Neither a prestigious university graduate nor a genius is needed to give children a small taste of education. Hermawati, of the tiny and impoverished Pulau Burung Island off the South Kalimantan coast in Indonesia, is proof of that.

Academically, … Hermawati does not qualify as a teacher. She only has a Sekolah Rakyat degree, equivalent to elementary school, which provided her only with basic reading and writing skills. Nonetheless, she has dedicated the last 15 years to teaching children on the island, and all for free. She even built her own school building, with a thatch roof, wooden walls and earthen floor. That was in 1993.

SD Tunas Nelayan is the first school ever on the island. Before then, children had to travel 30 minutes by rowboat to the mainland. For speedier travel by motorboat, they had to pay more. Most of Pulau Burung residents are traditional fishermen. Due to poverty, most parents on the island did not send their children to school in the mainland. The children spent their days playing or helping their parents with minor fishery tasks. Consequently, most children in Pulau Burung were illiterate … She says: “Our dream is simple: that children can read and write. That is all I can do for them” … (1000peacewomen 1/2).

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Hermawati – of Island Pulau Burung of South Kalimantan, Indonesia …

… (sorry, my photo upload software doesn’t work anymore, no more NEW pictures are possible, only allready published ones out of an existing file … and my famous software Ingeneer, having built up all this beautiful blog construction, is death by lung cancer … peace and eternal gratitude to his beautiful soul … but why had he smoked so much, just to let me alone now with several upcoming software messes ??? Messes I cannot fight !!!).

Hermawati works for SD Tunas Nelayan (named in a list on NISN /Rekap Data).

(1000peacewomen 2/2):  … “I felt sorry to see the children unable to read and write,” Hermawati says. ”

So I thought it might help if we could just set up a school here. A modest one would do, so that the children could at least get a basic education.

She began her crusade in 1991, when she started giving basic reading and writing lessons to the children. Her classroom was a small wooden house she built with the help of her neighbors, using materials donated by a government organization. She named her elementary school Tunas Nelayan, which means the hope of fishermen. She did not charge any fees because she knew it would only prevent parents from sending their children to her school. She even provided the learning materials. The parents only had to spend for the children’s writing books.

Her makeshift classroom quickly disassembled, however, so Hermawati had to find ways to build a new one. In 1993, she collected all her family’s savings and rebuilt her school. Hermawati’s family is not rich, although they are better off compared to the other Pulau Burung residents. At that time, her husband worked as a laborer at a timber plantation.

She finally managed to rebuild the school, in her backyard, a modest 18-square meter three room house made with wooden walls, a thatch roof and floor. Since Hermawati was not academically trained and she knew only basic reading and writing skills, she improvised the curriculum. In order to improve her reading and writing, she attended the government’s illiteracy eradication “Paket B” program. A few dozen children on the island now attend her school, which accepts students from the first to the fifth grade. Sixth-grade students have to continue their studies in an Islamic elementary school on the mainland. Public elementary schools refuse to accept Hermawati’s students, citing the inadequacy of her curriculum.

In the early years, Hermawati taught the children all by herself. She handled students from the first to the fifth grade, in one class after the other, allocating two hours for each class. She taught from morning to late afternoon, making her husband very unhappy about her schedule. He worried that Hermawati did not have enough time to take care of their three children. He often got angry when Hermawati was not around to serve him when he returned home from work.

“I did not dare argue with him,” she says. “But when he cooled down, I would calmly ask him to understand that what I did was important to help give children a better future and that he would be proud to see the fruit of my works in the time to come.” In 2000, Hermawati’s eldest son, Parhansyah, began to help her teach. “I felt sorry for mother, she had worked so hard to teach the children without any help,” he says. He completed junior high school in the Islamic school on the mainland. 

Since Hermawati did not charge any fees, she faced financial difficulties in maintaining her school. She almost had to close it down in 2001 due to a severe shortage in teaching equipment, which forced her to appeal to the government for help, but to no avail. The local ministry of education office sent its staff only later that year to help her teach. Unfortunately, the helping hands lasted for only a year. Meanwhile, her school building began to deteriorate. The roof had so many holes, she had to dismiss her class when it rained. During heavy storms, classes had to be called off for a few days for fear that the building would collapse.

Providence, however, was on her side. In 2004, an article about her crusade appeared in a national newspaper, which described vividly the condition of her school and her tireless efforts to bring education to the children on the island. According to the article, the school was in ‘a more appalling condition than a cow stable in Banjarmasin’ [the South Kalimantan capital city], and Hermawati had no funds left to refurbish it, let alone erect a new one.

The report moved the hearts of the Batu Licin police housewives’ group, who paid her a visit. The women have since been regularly sending its members to visit Hermawati’s school help her teach. Several policewomen have also volunteered to help Hermawati. “I really respect her, ’says Indri Widyaningsih, a policewoman. “She is an extraordinary woman. Not many people these days are willing to work so hard and sacrifice so much for so long without getting financial reward.”

on Hermawati’s struggle. She has since received donations of teaching equipment and money, and her school has also been awarded with education funds by a bank and the regency office.

Hermawati is pleasantly surprised to see the enormous support she has received. She says she did not expect so much. “My wish is simple. I wonder if I could be made a civil servant. But, is that possible? I have not enough academic background. All I have is honesty, commitment to my cause and patience.”

Hermawati’s school was renovated in late 2004 by the local government, which hired two college graduates from the mainland to be part-time teachers. The two teachers, however, have not been very useful; they are often absent, citing transportation problem as their excuse. Still, with the help of her son and volunteer tutors, plus the donations, Hermawati’s burden has become more manageable. Many children in Pulau Burung are now able to read and write. More parents have become enthusiastic in sending their children to school.

Hermawati continues to work hard to help local children realize their dream of getting an education. However, she still has her worries. Her school is still unaccredited, which will make it difficult for the children to transfer to other schools for their higher education. She now has about 60 students, many of whom cannot go to school everyday since they have to help their parents. The teacher, her pupils and their parents are still struggling for a better life and a better future. “Our dream is simple: that children can read and write. That is all I can do for them,” says Hermawati. (On (1000peacewomen).

(Sorry, there are many women named Hermawati, but all with a second name which is missing here for our peacewomen. Dissambiguation is no more possible. In any way her work has to be honored on this blog).

Some links around poor children’s learning:

The Google download book: The School achievement of minority children, By Ulric Neisser, 198 pages;

Children ‘impoverished’ by poor education;

Poor children missing out on after school activities;

Education is the key;

BRAC schools in Sudan for 175 poor children;

EJ156121 – Poor Children Learning to Read Do Not Have Trouble with Auditory Discrimination But Do Have Trouble with Phoneme Recognition;

Reading First and its Impact on Poor Children;

Could computers help poor children learn better?

Brightest poor children do worse than wealthy but dim classmates;

Akshaya Patra India;

Children’s under-achievement could be down to poor working memory;

Changing Homeless Children’s Lives;

Lack of transport blights lives of poor children in the countryside – ATL;

A school based study of children with learning disability indicates poor levels of genetic investigation, journal of medical genetics.

Sabine Döring’s main research areas are the theory of practical rationality, ethics, aesthetics, and increasingly the philosophy of mind, with an emphasis on the philosophy of emotion. In her thesis (entitled “Ästhetische Erfahrung als Erkenntnis des Ethischen: Die Kunsttheorie Robert Musil’s und die analytische Philosophie”) she examined Robert Musil’s claim that ethical knowledge can only be gained by aesthetic experience. This claim is ultimately based on a particular theory of emotion, fascinating enough to ground an enduring interest into the subject. Sabine Döring “Habilitationsschrift” (Second Book) deals with the problem of rational motivation, i. e. with the problem of how to account for the conceptual claim that normative practical reasons are capable of motivating us towards action. In short, the idea is that this problem can only be solved by integrating the emotions, understood as “affective perceptions”, into the theory of practical rationality and morality. (on sabinedoering.de/research).

Sabine Doering-Manteuffel (geborene Künsting, * 3. August 1957 in Bonn) ist seit 1995 Professorin für Europäische Ethnologie/Volkskunde in Augsburg. Nach dem Studium der Völkerkunde, Philosophie, Geschichte und Volkskunde in Köln und Bonn, das sie 1984 mit der Promotion abschloss, war sie bis 1989 an der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin tätig. 1987 war sie Visiting Scholar an der Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Kanada. 1988 hatte sie ein Post-Doc-Stipendium am Maison des Sciences de l`Homme in Paris. Nach der Habilitation in Mainz 1993 erhielt sie 1995 den Ruf nach Augsburg. 1999 war sie Gastprofessorin am Center for West European Studies an der University of Pittsburgh, USA. 2003 nahm sie eine Gastprofessur (Directrice d`Études associée) am Maison des Sciences de l`Homme in Paris an. Sabine Doering-Manteuffel ist verheiratet mit dem Zeithistoriker Anselm Doering-Manteuffel … (full text).

Her bio in german on the UniAugsburg;

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Sabine A. Döring-Manteuffel – Germany – (sorry, it’s again the upload tool for NEW photos)

Listen this audio in german: WGT 2008 MDR Radio Bericht über Okkultismus & Schwarze Szene, 06.13 min, May 20, 2008.

Her book: The Occult, 352 pages, 2008:

• Occultism is the collective name for a number of neo-heathen, esoteric and theosophical currents that affect, move and threaten people. Especially since the 18th century, occultism has been going through a period of popularity that is unbroken to this day. Sabine Doering-Manteuffel tells the history of occultism from the late Middle Ages until the present day … (full text).
• A success story in the shadow of the Enlightenment.

Moral Emotions about Risky Technologies, Delft, Netherlands: Risk Assessment as Virtue, by Sabine A. Döring and Fritz Feger, University of Mancheste, 11 pdf-pages.

Find her and her publications bei PapierChaos; bei alibris.com and on alibris.uk; on de.wikipedia; on philPapers; on Google Book-search.

Beyond the Witch Trials – Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe, Edited by Owen Davies and Willem de Blécourt: (This) is an important volume on the nature of witchcraft and magic in European society during the Enlightenment. This innovative book provides the reader with a challenging variety of approaches and sources of information, as well as advancing the study of witchcraft into the eighteenth century. The essays cover England, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany, Scotland, Finland and Sweden, and examine the experience of and attitudes towards witchcraft in those countries. The contributors come from different academic disciplines and move beyond the usual historical perspectives and sources. They emphasize the importance of studying such themes as the aftermath of witch trials, the continued role of cunning-folk in society, and the nature of the witchcraft discourse in different social contexts … Praise: This is a fine collection of essays on an important topic in witchcraft studies.The study of the persistence of witchcraft beliefs and accusations during a period of enlightenment has only recently begun, and these essays make a substantial contribution to that enterprise.”–Brian P. Levack, University of Texas at Austin … Table of contents: … The dissemination of magical knowledge in Enlightenment Germany, (by) Sabine Doering-Manteuffel … (full text).

IMPRESSIONS FROM THE INTERNATIONAL NARRATIVE RESEARCHERS CONFERENCE “ERZÄHLEN ZWISCHEN DEN KULTUREN” IN AUGSBURG, 1.–5.09.2002 – The committee for narrative research at the German Ethnology Society (Die Kommission für Erzählforschung in der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde) organised under the leadership of narrative researchers Sabine Wienker-Piepho and Sabine Doering-Manteuffel on September 1–5, 2002, in Augsburg, Germany, the international conference Erzählen zwischen den Kulturen (Intercultural Narrating): … The question of right and wrong, with regard to heritage, often can be reduced to fears and stereotypes that help create a distance from strangers. This distance is necessary for getting used to the stranger. And it is also used to change the stereotype and assimilate the other among the self. The task of narrative research is to find the reasons of narrating: what is important in the society, what is feared, what are we protected from by narrating the fears or by visualising them. Herein lies the reason for giving value to the comments and narrating situation and the need to record both. The papers revealed that within Europe we might rather talk about local features of intracultural narratives, especially in the case of stories concerning the relations of people and nature, Europeans and non-Europeans or even political relations. Intercultural narrating is related to national relations, migration and tourism. Narrating is limited to a fairly limited circle if the topic concerns conflicts that do not carry similar weight with other heritage groups (holocaust stories in Jewish families, deportations in Estonian families … (full text, 5 pages).

She writes: With the consequentialist’s view, the emotions are a nonrational source of practical reason by constituting goals for action. What if, then, they interfere with the reasoned pursuit of these goals? Can emotional choices be rational? This is the claim of Robert H. Frank, whose evolutionary economic theory has recently gained some popularity among philosophers. Frank’s so-called commitment model is my concern in this paper. I explain its formal version which is meant to demonstrate that ‘honest’ individuals can prosper in the material world. It is those individuals who, according to Frank, regularly make rational emotional choices so as to solve ‘commitment problems’. This is claimed to be due to their specific genetic predisposition. I offer two interrelated arguments against the commitment model. First, I argue that Frank does not succeed in bridging the gap between deliberation and evolution. His model rather is exemplary of a research strategy which does not address the question of how the two processes may be combined coherently. Frank applies what, in inversion of Elliott Sober’s ‘heuristic of personification’, I am calling the ‘heuristic of biologisation’. He draws upon the isomorphism between deliberation and evolution consisting in that both are optimising processes. But the respective optimality criteria can come apart. I point out that this is so in the one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma. Frank’s prime example of a commitment problem provides a counter-example to the method he applies, and his classification of choices is ecisionist and inconsistent. This in turn undermines his account of practical rationality and morality. Opposing Frank’s ambitious normative claims, I show, secondly, that the commitment model does not rationalise emotional choices, leave alone establish their morality. Instead, Frank’s adaptive strategy leads to a paradox, which emerges precisely because the gap between deliberation and evolution remains unbridged … (full long text, 17 pdf-pages).

Buchrezension von Sabine Doering: Thorsten Becker, Das ewige Haus, Urdeutsches Pfarrhaus … Politische Brisanz gewinnt dieses Lutherbild allerdings durch die Romanfiktion, die das Leben des Reformators mit dem seines Biographen Gutsche verklammert. Aus der Sicht von dessen Nachlassverwalter, dem Erzähler des Romans, zieht sich eine unmittelbare Linie von Luthers fürstentreuer Haltung zu den Katastrophen der Gegenwart. Die Niederlage der Bauern in der Schlacht von Frankenhausen nimmt den Untergang der deutschen Soldaten bei Stalingrad vorweg, und Luthers Kritik an den Juden erscheint in grober Verkürzung gar als Vorbereitung des Holocaust … (full long text, 29. März 2009).

Die Philosophie gilt als das Geschäft der Vernunft. Gefühle hingegen werden meistens nicht als der Königsweg zur Weisheit gepriesen. Sie sind vage, unstet, subjektiv, nicht verallgemeinerbar und daher das verdächtige «Andere der Vernunft». Doch das ist nur die halbe Wahrheit. Wer genauer hinsieht, findet das philosophische Interesse an Emotionen schon in der Antike und als manchmal deutlichere, manchmal unauffälligere Spur durch die Geschichte des menschlichen Denkens – etwa bei Baruch Spinoza, David Hume, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre und vielen anderen mehr … (full text).

Viele Errungenschaften der Moderne verdanken wir den Ideen der Aufklärung. Menschenrechte und Staatlichkeit, Frieden und Freiheit sind Ziele, die in den meisten Ländern Europas Grundlage des gesellschaftlichen Lebens sind. Man könnte davon ausgehen, dass in solchen Gesellschaften ausschließlich vernünftige und aufgeklärte Weltanschauungen vorherrschen. Doch das ist nicht unbedingt der Fall.
Durch die beiden Medienrevolutionen – die erste nach Gutenberg und die zweite nach der Einführung des Internets – wurde ein okkulter Untergrund an Lesestoffen geschaffen, der in der heutigen Zeit in Verbindung mit Verkaufsstrategien einen Medienmarkt des Magischen bedient, an dem viele Anbieter und Kunden teilhaben. Der Vortrag zeigt anhand der Entwicklung dieses Marktes seit dem 18. Jahrhundert auf, wie das Zusammenspiel aus neuen Informationstechnologien, einer Säkularisierung der Lebenswelt seit dem 19. Jahrhundert und dem Transzendenzbedürfnis des Einzelnen in einem rational-technischen Alltag zu okkultistischen Weltanschauungen führt … (full text, 15. September 2008).

links:

Zembla-documentaire ontmaskert het ‘medium’ Char — paaszondag, ’s avonds op Nederland 2;

Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany (review);

Humanities and Social Sciences online: Aus den Feuilletons vom 23. – 29.5.2007;

Die Kategorie “Volkskundler” auf Wikipedia.

Jacquie Cozens is a wildlife film-maker, with credits on The Discovery Channel, Channel 5 in the UK, and the BBC. Jacquie is based in Dingle where she co-owns a dive centre. (on IrishWildlife).

Until recently Jacquie Cozens and Neal Clayton owned a dive centre in Dingle, south west Ireland but are now living on Sal in Cabo Verde. Jacquie has been diving for more than 20 years with experience in cave diving and using rebreathers. Her credentials include an HSE Part IV Commercial Diving qualification as well as being a PADI Open Water Instructor.  Jacquie holds an RYA Advanced Powerboat qualification. Jacquie is also an independent producer and presenter of underwater natural history programmes, having worked for BBC Leonardo’s Amazing Inventions (Leonardo’s Amazing Inventions), Walt Disney (The Real Killer Squid), C5 and The Discovery Channel (The Truth About Killer Squid).  Her latest film, ‘Grey Seals – Life on the Edge’ has won many awards at Festivals and (was) broadcasted at the end of 2007. Jacquie also occasionally writes for Diver & Dive magazine in the UK and Subsea, the magazine of the Irish diving organisation, CFT.  This feature was published in October 2003.  Jacquie’s article about yoga and diving was published in April 04, a review of the Steam Machines Prism rebreather in Oct 04 and an article about diving in Panama (May 05). Her latest article about grey seals was published in Diver in March 2007. Jacquie is now working on a film about the turtles in Cabo Verde. (on diveCapoverde.com).

• The Jacquie Cozens’ website;
• Find her Bio on South West Dive Show 2005 (scroll down).

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Jacquie Cozens – Ireland

4th Matsalu International Nature Film Festival 2006 – Highly Commended Nominations:  “Grey Seals – Life on Edge“, Jaqcuie Cozens, UK/Ireland, Excellence in Documentary.

Leonardo’s design for an underwater breathing apparatus consists of cane tubes joined by leather, with steel rings to prevent them being crushed by the water pressure. The tubes are attached to a face-mask and at the other end to a bell-shaped float to keep the openings above water. A diving suit based on this design using pig leather, bamboo tubes, and a cork float was built, and tested by a diver, Jacquie Cozens. It worked well in shallow waters … (full text).

For five years I had been studying to make this dive in the Sea of Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California, which divides Mexico’s Baja California peninsula from the mainland. Along with my diving partner Jacquie Cozens and a small crew, I was there filming Humboldt: The Man-Eating Squid. This documentary, which is the first episode in a series called “Dangerous Waters,” is scheduled to be released in January. For most people, the word “squid” probably conjures images of deep-fried appetizers, not flesh-eating carnivores. But the truth is, Humboldt squid have approximately 1,200 sucker discs, each one lined with 20 to 26 needle-sharp teeth. This allows the Humboldt to attack its prey with more than 24,000 teeth at once. And nestled in its bed of eight muscular arms and two feeding tentacles is a disproportionately large, knife-edged beak similar to a parrot’s. But the Humboldt is much larger than a parrot: they have been found as large as 14 feet in length and weighing more than 700 pounds … (full text).

She writes:

• … We work in partnership with the DGA (Dept of Environment), the Câmara Municipal (local government), Maritime and Civil Police, INDP (Fisheries) and ISECMAR (Marine Sciences Institute). The project is incorporated into the National Plan for the Protection of Marine Turtles. Other threats to the turtles include nest destruction by vehicles, egg poaching and the collection of turtles (in tourist facilities and homes as pets), loss of habitat (plastic waste and depleted beaches) and massive shoreline development. Public awareness of conservation issues has been very low. The strategy has been to train Capeverdian Wildlife Rangers, who with overseas and local community volunteers patrol the beaches every night and morning. Former turtle keepers have also been recruited. Rangers have saved 18 turtles that were about to be killed and, together with the Public Prosecutor, we are bringing the first action against hunters for Environmental Crime. The only turtles lost on protected beaches have been killed far from the beach, something that was previously unnecessary, as killing turtles was considered risk free. Protected areas (including a hatchery) have been established (first official quad/ATV trails in Cabo Verde) as well as an ecotourism programme, a ‘turtle friendly’ programme for businesses and beach clean ups. All illegal tourist attractions with turtles have been closed down … (full text 29th Sea Turtle Symposiumm, Brisbane, Australia, 2009);
• DIVERS LOVE GREY SEALS, and I have been fortunate enough to spend a large part of the past two years documenting the most westerly colony in Europe. The remote Blasket Islands in County Kerry, Ireland are just one of their havens around the British Isles and Ireland. Grey seals were the world’s first protected mammals, but unfortunately they are still persecuted in many European countries. Last September, 12 pregnant seals were shot on an Orkney beach by a gunman using a high-velocity rifle, and there have been recent calls for culls by fishermen, who often blame seals for low fish catches and for damaging fishing gear. In November 2004, the seals on the Blasket Islands were subjected to a brutal and unwarranted slaughter. Almost 60 animals were killed, mainly newborns, accounting for virtually the entire season’s pups. By some strange coincidence, we had chosen that day to film the seals, so we were able to notify the authorities immediately of killings that might otherwise have gone unnoticed … (full text);
• … As a film-maker, using a rebreather makes perfect sense – the lack of bubbles and longer dive times have obvious benefits. Previous use of a semi-closed system had not impressed me – it was definitely not bubble-free and the dive times were barely longer than using a single tank of nitrox. So, having looked long and hard at what was available and after several years of thinking about it, … (full text).

Underwater film-maker Jacquie Cozens says rebreathers allow her to get closer to subjects and extend valuable filming time … ,

Im Sommer 2007 mussten Juan Blanco und Jacquie Cozens miterleben, wie Nacht für Nacht auf der ganzen Insel Sal Schildkröten brutal und unverhohlen abgeschlachtet wurden. Erschüttert darüber, beschloss jeder von ihnen, etwas dagegen zu tun. Jaquie ging nun jeden Morgen die Strände an der Ostküste der Insel ab, zählte die Nester und Spuren und sammelte Abfall ein. Abends ging sie an den Strand, um potentielle Täter davon abzuhalten, noch mehr Schildkröten zu töten … (SOS Tartarugus.org/deutsch).

links:

Divedingle.com (in many languages);

The Irish Wildlife;

dive cabo verde;

divernet.com;

Dive Magazine.co.uk;

BlueOceanPix.com;

SCUBA COIBA IN SANTA CATALINA, PANAMA;

Dok-Sendung auf SF1 (Schweizer Fernsehen), 27.03.2009, um 11.00 h (Fischernetze sind für Robben wie ein Selbstbedienungsladen); do. als Text. Fernsehen.ch/blog;

Diving in Dingle / Ireland, April 2005;

SOS Tartarugus.org/english, and its blog: Turtle SOS Cabo Verde (saving loggerhead turtles from extinction);

SeaTurtle.org.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Kek Galabru (born 1942) is one of Cambodia’s foremost defenders of human rights. After studying medicine in France and practicing it while following her diplomat husband to various posts abroad, she became instrumental in achieving political peace in her country. In 1992, she founded the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Licadho), which she heads at great personal risk. Licadho educates the people on their democratic rights and provides defense in court for victims of torture, domestic violence and police attacks. Kek Galabru looks like a queen, slim and erect in her long blue silk dress. In fact, her parents, both teachers and later government ministers, were friends of the royal family.This enabled her to play a key role in opening negotiations between Cambodia’s Prime Minster Hun Sen and opposition leader Prince Sihanouk, which led to the Paris Peace Accords of 1991 … She says: “Courage means to brave intimidation in order to do something for the people” … (1000peacewomen 1/2).

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Pung Chhiv Kek Galabru – Cambodia

She works for the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights LICADHO.

… “An official from the Council of Ministers recently said that a new draft law allowing foreigners to own Khmer land will be sent to the National Assembly to be deliberated and adopted in the near future. “The draft law, which is known to have been initiated to satisfy the goal of wealthy foreigners, especially Chinese and Yuon [Vietnamese], is receiving strong reactions from civil society and from Khmer people. “Ms. Pung Chhiv Kek [Dr. Kek Galabru], president of the local human rights organization Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, said that nowadays, land issues in Cambodia are moving towards a crisis; if the law permits foreigners to own Khmer land, it would cause a situation of double deprivation. “Based on the Cambodian constitution, foreigner shall not have the right to own a house or a building, and they shall not have the right to own a plot of land in Cambodia, this right is only for those who hold Khmer citizenship. If the new draft law is adopted, it would be a surprise and very terrifying for the future of Cambodia. Parts of Cambodian land would be lost to foreigners for money … (full text, 14 February 2008).

Find her on Google Book-search.

1000peacewomen 2/2: … But Dr. Galabru is mainly dedicated to grassroots work. The Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, better known as Licadho, which she founded in 1992 and continues to direct, has offices in half of Cambodia’s provinces, with 1,000 mostly volunteers as collaborators.

Its first self-given task is to educate people to vote freely, disregarding the threats of the ruling party. One of its main activities is to represent victims of domestic or police violence (mainly women, children, opposition leaders, teachers, social workers and members of NGOs) in court where it has won about a third of its cases.

It also fights the massive illegal logging condoned by the corrupt government and the army. Above all, it teaches people their rights through classes, comic books, TV and radio programs and theater productions. As Dr. Galabru says, “The mere fact of our presence makes a difference.” And she keeps fighting in spite of serious threats against her person and a brutal attack on one of her two daughters engaged in the same causes.

Her definition of courage is, “To do something for the people inspite of the intimidation.” No wonder the taxi-driver had no problem finding her modest office in Phnom Penh: Everybody in Cambodia knows Licadho. (on 1000peacewomen).

Beside being cited for the Nobel Prize nomination, no more articles found in english about our peacewomen.

Articles about Human Rights in Cambodia:

Human rights in Cambodia – on wikipedia: The human rights situation in Cambodia is facing growing criticisms both within the country and an increasingly alarmed international community. After a series of flagrant violation against basic human rights a feeling of incertitude regarding the direction the country is emerging, sometimes comparing the situation to a new-born Burma.
In its 2004 report on Cambodia, Human Rights Watch stated that “Authorities continue to ban or disperse most public demonstrations. Politicians and journalists critical of the government face violence and intimidation and are barred from equal access to the broadcast media. In addition, the judiciary remains weak and subject to political influence. Trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation through networks protected or backed by police or government officials is rampant. The government continues to turn a blind eye to fraudulent confiscation of farmers’ land, illegal logging, and widespread plundering of natural resources.” The current state of the country could be described as a semblance of pluralistic democracy.
In July 2004, the royalist opposition party FUNCINPEC formed a coalition government with the Cambodian People Party (CPP) after a political deadlock of more than a year. More recently, Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) members have been targeted for criminal prosecutions, after seeing the parliamentarian immunity of several SRP member lifted by a criticized closed-door hand vote with members of the parliament … (full text).

links:

International Organizations (about Human Rights):

• Amnesty International: Cambodia;
• Human Rights Watch: Cambodia;
• Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia;
• ILO Projects in Cambodia – International Labour Organization;
• Projects & Activities by UNIFEM;
• Country Reports on CEDAW;
• Country Info from UNICEF;
• Understanding the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC);
• Latest Resources for Cambodia from Child Rights Information Network;

The Danish Instiute for Human Rights;

Chinese Human Rights;

Human Rights Cambodia on Google News-results;

Human Rights NGOs on Google-search;

Categories on wikipedia:

• Cambodian society;
• Cambodian law;
• Law by country;
• Politics of Southeast Asia;
• Politics of Cambodia;
• Human rights by country.

When Shyamala Natarajan (born 1963) started working on HIV/AIDS and related issues 16 years ago, the stigma surrounding the disease was appalling. She had to fight opposition from her family to set up the South India AIDS Action Program SIAAP. Through her work, Shyamala has been reaching out to sex workers, sexual minorities, such as men having sex with men MSM and eunuchs. She is involved in building capacities of community-based organizations to take up the issue of HIV/AIDS and campaigning on HIV prevention. Shyamala is also actively involved with organizing sex workers, and believes strongly in community-based (as opposed to forced governmental) rehabilitation. Over the years, she has created space to make discussions on HIV/AIDS possible … (1000peacewomen 1/2).

Over the years, Shyamala has created space to make discussions on HIV/Aids possible, and brought about a whole slew of government policy changes.

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Sorry, no photo found for Shyamala Natarajan, India.

She works for the South India Aids Action Program SIAAP.

… The conference inauguration, with speakers from Brazil, Africa and Australia, provided a business-like start and then Shyamala Natarajan, head of the South India Aids Programme, got to her feet. She started to complain about the shortage of free condoms. This sparked further protests from students who began shouting slogans demanding regular free condom distribution. They circulated a press release to all the delegates saying that condom distribution had been cut so much that some HIV prevention work in Tamil Nadu had been halted altogether. It was estimated that the state needed between three and five million condoms a month while only 500,000 had been offered to HIV projects. Now, they claimed, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare was asking projects to charge people for the condoms they were given … (full text).

… In her inaugural address, Ms. Shyamala Natarajan, programme director, South India AIDS Action Programme, departed from the usual. List the qualities that you find in your best friend, she asked them. Respect for one another, honesty and support were some of the answers the children gave. Look for these in a relationship too later in life, she said, and stay away from trouble … (full text).

1000peacewomen 1/2: Lobbying with the government on this issue, she has brought about many changes in government policy. For example:

• In 1990, the Government of Tamil Nadu (GoTN) framed a policy against detention of persons testing HIV+; in 1992, the Government of India (GoI) also adopted this policy.
• In 1994, the health and family welfare department, GoI, adopted a policy to improve condom quality.
• In 1996, the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) adopted a policy against mandatory testing for HIV.
• In 1995, the GoTN adopted a policy to include HIV+ persons in decision-making. Later, the NACO also accepted this principle.
• In 1996, the Tamil Nadu Panchayat Unions adopted a policy to support the rights of women in sex work.
• In 2000, the NACO adopted a policy to provide counseling services for reproductive health in government hospitals.
• In 2003, the NACO adopted a policy to train and place counselors drawn from communities of people marginalized on the basis of sexuality, gender, and HIV.

Shyamala’s work has influenced and inspired many individuals and organizations. Usha, formerly a sex worker, is a case in point: after her association with Shyamala and SIAAP, Usha started WATT, an organization that works on the same issues. (on 1000peacewomen).

… The names of Shyamala Natarajan, Saraswathi and Krishna Jagannathan were announced by the NGO Wednesday. The three women figure in a list of 1,000 women from 150 countries, whose names have been submitted to the Nobel Prize Committee. Natarajan is a journalist in her late 40s and is the founder director of South India AIDS Action. She has been working with HIV- positive and AIDS-affected people for more than a decade. Saraswathi, hailing from Chennai, works with campaigns to eliminate caste discriminations. Jagannathan is an environmentalist and works for women’s issues. She belongs to Nagapattinam district, which was hit badly by the December tsunami disaster … (full text).

Many persons with the same name exist in the web, not being our peacewomen.

links:

The tale of two women, March 24, 2007;

Introduction – Milestones in the Understanding of HIV/AIDS Mother-to-Child Transmission in India, by Patrice Cohen, GRIS, University of Rouen, France, French Institute of Pondicherry, 9 pdf pages;

The Google download book: Emancipation and empowerment of women, By V. Mohini Giri, 1998, 354 pages.

Fellow Phyllis Bennis is in charge of the New Internationalism Project at IPS. The Middle East component of the Project challenges the drive towards U.S. empire in that region and beyond, focusing particularly on ending the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq, and supporting a just and comprehensive peace based on an end to Israeli occupation of Palestine. The United Nations component analyzes U.S. domination of the UN and attempts to strengthen the potential role of the UN as part of a new internationalism and the global resistance to empire. Since September 11, 2001, the New Internationalism Project has also been involved in assessing the root causes of, and critiquing Bush administration responses to, that tragedy.
Phyllis is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years. While working as a journalist at the United Nations during the run-up to the 1990-91 Gulf War, she began working on U.S. domination of the UN, and stayed involved in work on Iraq sanctions and disarmament, and later U.S. war and occupation in Iraq. In 1999, Phyllis accompanied a group of congressional aides to Iraq to examine the impact of U.S.-led economic sanctions on humanitarian conditions there, and later joined former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, who resigned his position as Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq to protest the impact of sanctions, in a speaking tour. In 2001 she helped found and currently co-chairs the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. She works closely with the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, and since 2002 has played an active role in the growing global peace movement. (on IPS /about /staff).

Phyllis Bennis, author and senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies speaks to Paul Jay about Obama’s plan for withdrawal as the war in Iraq marks its sixth year anniversary. She says, “the Obama administration has a commitment to a major reduction in the size of the occupation,” but continues, “I am less convinced that there is a real commitment to a real withdrawal” … (watch this video, 16.39 min, March 23, 2009).

… Her latest book is “Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power” (Interlink, 2005). The Institute for Policy Studies is a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C.

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Phyllis Bennis – USA

Watch these videos:

• What is withdrawing ‘responsibly’ from Iraq? 16.39 min, with Phyllis Bennis, March 23, 2009, on RealNewsNetwork. Bennis (says): “Obama has to change the mindset that leads to war, US cannot dictate Iraq’s future”;
• Don’t cut and run, but get out of Iraq now, 9.19 min, with Phyllis Bennis, March 13, 2009, on RealNewsNetwork. Bennis (says): “Debt owed to Iraqi people can only be paid after ending occupation – Non-combat troops Pt.2″;
• If we bomb Iran, then what? 6.09 min, posted March 22, 2009;
• The Presidential Elections and the Future of then Middle East, 56.53 min, Oct 17, 2008;
• Dual Occupations: Iraq and Palestine in Bush’s Empire, 57.16 min, Oct 20, 2005.

Author and activist Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies will speak in the Senate Chambers (Tivoli 329) on Wednesday, April 11, at 1:00. She will be discussing U.S. policy toward Iraq, Iran and other countries in the Middle East. (on aurariasds.blogspot).

… Mozgovaya neither showed up nor sent her regrets, however, and Barghouti, who was in Ramallah, initially couldn’t be reached by phone. So Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, spoke to the nearly full room of mostly new faces, as Peace Café co-founder Andy Shallal tried to reach Barghouti … (full text, March 2009).

Find her and her publications on Ask.com; on Zmag; on amazon; on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

… Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies writes, “War production doesn’t create real economic health.” We account for approximately half of all global military spending. Our military budget is larger than what the next 45 nations together spend, much wasted on fantasy weapons like Reagan’s silly missile defense system or outmoded weapons systems like aircraft-carrier battle groups. Meanwhile, the infrastructure deteriorates. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave it a grade of D. Thirty-five million citizens go hungry or face hunger on a regular basis. Forty-five million people have no health insurance and millions more don’t have enough. But we throw away trillions on war, especially the war on terror, which, as Meriam Pemberton of the Institute for Policy Studies and Lawrence Korb write, “is one that is not working (while) diplomacy, peacekeeping, and international police work are the ones that are” … (full text, March 11, 2009).

The Gaza Crisis, Phyllis Bennis, December 28, 2008.

… Obama is no patsy. He has practical reasons for his desire to move on. First of all, he’s sending more U.S. troops in Afghanistan — a poorly thought-out plan, argue Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributors Farrah Hassen and Phyllis Bennis — and any discussion of U.S. war crimes would complicate his mission. Moreover, any investigation of U.S. conduct in Iraq would run up against the uncomfortable truth that a large number of folks in Obama’s party favored the invasion. A Predator strike on the Republican opposition, in other words, would cause collateral damage on the Democrats. This collective responsibility relates to the second problem: The legal case for war crimes isn’t a slam dunk. Unlike the Nuremberg trials against the Nazis, lawyers can’t make the argument that the government that authorized the invasion of Iraq was an illegitimate one. “The legislature and the courts continued to function according to the constitution, even though the president tried to shield his actions and those of his administration from review,” writes Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Robert Pallitto in Prosecuting the Bush Team? “In several instances — authorizing military action against Iraq, detainee treatment, denial of court review to detainees, immunity for warrantless wiretapping — Congress approved presidential actions, thus making it harder to argue that the government wasn’t operating according to valid law” … (full text, March 10, 2009).

Americans Open To Force To Rein In Iran On Nukes, March 10, 2009.

… Olive Press has just released two excellent titles from author Phyllis Bennis, a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. Both Understanding the US-Iran Crisis and Ending the Iraq War are perfect choices for teens researching US history and policy as it applies to Iran and Iraq. The books are designed around clearly set question and answer sections and chapters that parcel history from modern events but build successively on previous sections. This translates into a lot of easy to digest information such as the bit from Understanding the US-Iran Crisis about how the company British Petroleum was initially named the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and developed so that the British government could exploit what later became the Iranian oil fields. (The company dates to 1908 and is still majority-owned by the government.) Bennis excels at this kind of information, not just thrown out for trivial shock, but to show how in the case of Iran, oil was key to western involvement in that country from the beginning of the 20th century and played a huge part in the removal of its democratically elected leader in 1953 and installation of the Shah of Iran… by the United States … (full text, March 2009).

She writes:

• … At the United Nations: Also indicative of Washington’s strategy was the US veto of a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations, squelching any possibility of an early international call for an end to the killing. At this point, despite extensive discussion and widespread calls for a ceasefire, the US opposition to a ceasefire has largely paralyzed the Security Council. The secretary general has presented a set of recommendations that, while flawed in some respects at least begins with a call for an immediate “end to hostilities,” even if not an official ceasefire. Other UN officials, including humanitarian Jan Egeland and High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour have spoken of war crimes being committed, and called for an immediate end to hostilities. Several leading Non-Aligned countries have indicated other international initiatives might be under consideration as well, perhaps leading to a call for creation of an international “Coalition of the Willing to Stop the Killing.” The US and Israel appear to be considering a UN proposal that would send international troops – “not UN Blue-helmets,” according to US Ambassador John Bolton – to the region. While the call for international protection is a longstanding regional demand, the version under discussion now would be far too one-sided to answer the real need. It would essentially impose a new occupation of south Lebanon, albeit by international, rather than Israeli troops, its mandate would include forcible disarming of Hezbollah while doing nothing to rein in Israel’s attacks, and it might even be based on NATO, rather than UN troops … (full text, );
• … I was part of the side of the Viet Nam anti-war movement whose favorite chant was “One side’s right, one side’s wrong. We’re on the side of the Viet Cong!” During the Central America years my part of the movement didn’t only oppose U.S. intervention, we also supported the FMLN in El Salvador and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And throughout the anti-apartheid years, I supported the African National Congress. But that was then. This is now. I have spent the last five years opposing the invasion and occupation of Iraq (and before that, a dozen years opposing an earlier war and genocidal U.S.-led economic sanctions against Iraq). I spent – and still spend – weeks and months on the road, speaking at huge demonstrations and in tiny church basements, writing articles and talking points and whatever to help build and strengthen our movement. But I never supported Saddam Hussein, who was “resisting” the U.S. during the sanctions years, and I didn’t -and don’t–support what is called “the Iraqi resistance” today. What’s the difference? It’s not only about what will expand our movement … (full text, July 31, 2007).

links:

Iraqi Holocaust: 2.3 Million Iraqi Excess Deaths, by Gideon Polya, 21 March, 2009;

Media with Conscience MWCnews;

Iraq Urged to Halt Execution of 128 Prisoners, March 19, 2009;

Photographs of the United For Peace and Justice Conference of June 6-8, 2003, by Diane Greene Lent;

Edward Said Remembered, March 2009.

Dr Steve Keen is an Associate Professor in economics and finance at the University of Western Sydney. He identifies as post-Keynesian, criticizing both modern neoclassical economics and (some of) Marxian economics as inconsistent, unscientific and empirically unsupported. The major influences on Keen’s thinking about economics include Hyman Minsky, Piero Sraffa and Joseph Alois Schumpeter. His recent work mostly concentrates on mathematical modeling and simulation of financial instability … // … Debunking Economics:  Keen’s full-range critique of neoclassical economics is contained in his book Debunking Economics. Keen collects and popularizes a wide variety of critiques of numerous aspects of neoclassical economic theory and argues that together they show that neoclassical assumptions are badly flawed. Keen’s book closes with a survey of various schools of heterodox economics, concluding “None of these is at present strong enough or complete enough to declare itself a contender for the title of ‘the’ economic theory of the 21st century.” However, he argues that neoclassical economics is a degenerative research program, not generating new knowledge but growing a belt of protective auxiliary hypotheses to shield its core beliefs from critique … (full text).

• Critique of neoclassical theory of the firm.
• He says: … “As an economist, I do something very unusual: I treat money seriously” … (on his Deptwatch blog /about).
• Steve Keen sees a recession we can’t avoid, Dec. 12, 2006.
• His Debtwatch blog, and his Debunking Economics- and personal website.

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Steve Keen – Australia

Watch these videos:

• Steve Keen – The merciless exponential debt explotion, 61.57 min, Feb. 3, 2008;
• Steve Keen – Questions and Answers, 32.41 min, Feb. 11, 2008;
• Talk one: the causes – Global Financial Crisis Event, Dr. Steve Keen, 32.17 min, Oct. 27, 2008.

Steve Keen’s (free online) Lectures on Economics and Finance:
If you are new to economics?or my approach to it?then I suggest you start with the History of Economic Thought lectures, and/or the Managerial Economics lectures, which evaluate conventional economics against the empirical data. All lectures are in Powerpoint format (which Linux users can now access using OpenOffice.org), and quite a few are supported by simulations … (full text … and much more … ).

He says also: Australia’s private debt has been growing more than 4 per cent faster than our GDP for over 50 years.

His book Debunking Economics is now available as an eBook. He writes about: … Debunking Economics takes you behind the sanitized, airbrushed view of economics given by its textbooks, and details the many critiques which have been made of economic theory by economists, in a fashion which is accessible to the intelligent non-economist. This site provides my presentations, lectures and academic papers on economics, as well as supplementary materials for the book Debunking Economics. By far the largest resource here is my collection of lectures on economics and finance that I give at the University of Western Sydney … (full long text).

… Keen’s outspoken views have made him a controversial figure in a profession dominated by those who believe in the essential equilibrium of capitalism. So does he feel vindicated in witnessing the subprime disaster and its fallout? “It’s nice to be right but when what you’re right about is saying that there’s going to be a serious catastrophe that will damage the lives of hundreds of millions of people, it’s very hollow … You don’t want to win like this.” He thinks many in the industry, including reserve banks around the world, should have foreseen the crisis but chose not to … (full long text, Aug. 27, 2008).

Find him and his publications on the Debunking Economics website; on amazon; on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

AUSTRALIA is facing its own version of the US sub-prime housing crisis, with thousands of young homeowners risking bankruptcy as a result of Kevin Rudd’s economic stimulus package. That is the grim warning from the economic expert who first called the debt crisis that is driving the global financial meltdown. Dubbing the looming crisis “Sub-Prime Lite,” Professor Steve Keen told The Sunday Telegraph Australia was making the same mistakes as the US. Professor Keen said in trying to avoid an economic crisis caused by too much borrowing, Australia was in effect encouraging the poorest in the community to take on even more debt. “Yet these low-paid first homebuyers are the people who are most vulnerable to the economic downturn,” he said … (full text, March 22, 2009).

He writes:

• … On this basis, the current Australian house price bubble is about 75% more extreme than the USA’s, which is now clearly in free-fall. A fall in Australian house prices is inevitable, and it will be driven by the household sector’s attempt to de-lever from its currently unprecedented level of debt. This de-leveraging will drive the economy down, taking employment with it–and especially the jobs of First Home Buyers, who are definition have less secure employment than older, established home owners. As I argued when The Boost was first announced (Rescuing the Economy or the Bubble? Debtwatch Blog October 19 2008), the policy is a mistake that will backfire on the Rudd Government when the global financial crisis finally comes home to roost here. Despite the bleatings of the property lobby, it should not be extended past its current termination date. (full text, Mar 23, 2009);
• … At some point debt will not continue to increase. It will turn negative, and change in debt will therefore subtract from aggregate demand rather than adding to it. Given that at its peak, debt financed almost 20 percent of demand, even stabilising debt at its current level–$1.85 trillion, compared to a GDP of $1.1 trillion–would result in a 20 percent fall in aggregate demand. This hit will be felt by both asset and commodity markets: asset prices will fall, as will output and employment. The government’s attempts to counter this–by running a deficit rather than a surplus–will initially be swamped by the sheer scale of the turnaround in debt-financed spending. Even if the government runs a deficit of A$20 billion–the same scale as this year’s intended surplus–it will make up for less than a tenth of the fall in debt-financed spending. The current “credit crunch” is, therefore, only the first act in a long-drawn out process of reducing debt levels. The second act will be “the recession we can’t avoid”. That recession–which will affect most of the OECD, since all major OECD nations bar France have suffered a similar blowout in private debt levels–will only add to the current decline in asset prices. (full text, August 6th, 2008);
• … Economics would have us believe that it is a science, fully able to stand tall beside the more conventional physical sciences and mathematics. After the preceding chapters, you may be inclined to doubt that belief. Surely, whatever ‘science’ is, one might hope that it is undertaken with more impartiality, regard for the facts and logical consistency than economics has displayed. However, the critiques of conventional economics which form the substance of this book were devised by critical economists (and sometimes, inadvertently, by conventional economists themselves) and some of these critiques have been acknowledged as valid by some conventional economists. There is also a small but robust minority working on other approaches to economic analysis, as you’ll find in Chapter 14. There are thus some systematic and logical aspects to what economists in general do, which could qualify as scientific behaviour. The position I favour is that economics is a science, but a rather pathological one. I am particularly critical of what has occurred since 1950, but I still hold out hope of better behaviour in the future. But before better behaviour can take widespread root, economics will have to wean itself from a methodological myth. This is the proposition, first put by Milton Friedman, that a theory cannot be judged by its assumptions, but only by the accuracy of its predictions. Leaving aside the question of whether economics has ever accurately predicted anything, the argument that “the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic [are] the assumptions” is simply bad philosophy. The kernel: … (full long text).

links:

The real-world economics review, newsletter, issue no. 49: How should the
collapse of the world financial system affect economics? Part II – downloadable as the whole issue, 94 pdf-pages;

To download articles individually by clicking on their pdf link, subscribe first the free newsletter, you’ll find the links in it … see also its Back issues;

Paul Ormerod;

The Levi Economics Institute of Bard College, its database … and on wikipedia;

First-home grant should be free loan, March 24, 2009;

Dismal science of economics faces dilemma, March 25, 2009;

Categories on wikipedia:

• Australian economists;
• Economists by nationality;
• Social scientists by nationality;
• Post-Keynesian economists;
• Economists by school of thought;
• Schools of economic thought and methodology.

Arun Manilal Gandhi (born April 14, 1934, Durban, South Africa) is the fifth grandson of Mohandas Gandhi through his second son Manilal. Following the footsteps of his grandfather, he is also a socio-political activist, although he eschews the ascetic lifestyle of his grandfather.[1] In January 2008, Gandhi resigned as director of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence, which he founded, following publication by the Washington Post of an essay “calling Jews and Israel ‘the biggest players’ in a global culture of violence”[2], an act that sparked criticism of Gandhi, as well as criticism of his detractors …(full text).

… 1946-1948 – He lived with his grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi …

Gandhi considers himself to be a Hindu but expresses universalist views.[8] Gandhi has worked closely with Christian priests and his philosophies are strongly influenced by Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Christian concepts. Like his grandfather, he also believes in the concept of non-violence (ahimsa). In 2003 he was one of the signatories to Humanism and Its Aspirations (Humanist Manifesto III). (on wikipedia /Principles).

• He is a Better World Heroe.
• He is president of the Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute.

In 1987, along with his entire family, Arun Gandhi moved to the United States to work on a study at the University of Mississippi. This study examined and contrasted the sorts of prejudices that existed in India, the U.S., and South Africa. Afterward they moved to Memphis, Tennessee and founded the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence hosted by the Christian Brothers University, a Catholic academic institution. This institute was dedicated to applying the principles of nonviolence at both local and global scales. In 2007, the institute moved to Rochester, New York, and is currently located on the University of Rochester River Campus … (on wikipedia /Nonviolent activism).

• His short Bio.
• His official website.

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Arun Manilal Gandhi – South Africa and USA

Watch this video:

• Arun Gandhi: Lessons from My Grandfather, first, 55.40 min, Aug 29, 2008.

He writes (about his grandfather): … “Ironically, if it hadn’t been for racism and prejudice, we may not have had a Gandhi. See, it was the challenge, the public need for the public victory that developed the private victory. He may have been just another successful lawyer who had made a lot of money. But, because of prejudice in South Africa, he was subjected to humiliation within a week of his arrival. He was thrown off a train because of the color of his skin. And it humiliated him so much that he sat on the platform of the station all night, wondering what he could do to gain justice. His first response was one of anger … (full text).

And three short videos:

• Arun Gandhi on Overcoming Anger, 6.13 min,
• Building Positive Relationships, 4.28 min,
• the Sunanda Gandhi Memorial School, 4.34 min.

In 1987, along with his entire family, Arun Gandhi moved to the United States to work on a study at the University of Mississippi. This study examined and contrasted the sorts of prejudices that existed in India, the U.S., and South Africa. Afterward they moved to Memphis, Tennessee and founded the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence hosted by the Christian Brothers University, a Catholic academic institution. This institute is dedicated to applying the principles of nonviolence at both local and global scales. Arun has given many speeches about non-violence in many countries. During his tour to Israel, he urged the Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation peacefully to assure their freedom.  In August 2004, Gandhi proposed to the Palestinian Parliament a peaceful march of 50,000 refugees across the Jordan River to return to their homeland, and said MPs should lead the way. Gandhi also remarked that the fate of Palestinians is ten times worse than that of blacks in South African Apartheid … (full text).

On July 22, 2007 Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Manilal Gandhi, was interviewed by Peter Sissons of the BBC News 24. Peter asked what Mahatma Gandhi would have done had he seen the Al-Qaeda problem. “Why don’t all the Muslims, Christians and other religions have a day of fasting to show Al-Qaeda that we reject their philosophy,” Arun Manilal Gandhi, founder of M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence replied … (full text).

Find him and his publications on NNDB; on IMDb; on duckduckgo.com; on FreeBase; on BookRags; on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

On January 7, 2008, in an article entitled “Jewish Identity Can’t Depend on Violence,” published in the Washington Post online “On Faith” section, Mr. Gandhi wrote that the “Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience,” which he considered “a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends.” He concluded: “We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity” … (on wikipedia /Controversy).

He says also: … “Nonviolence is something very powerful, and the power behind it is not weapons, but the support of the people … and: People need to realize that they need to take the initiative … and: Nonviolence, therefore, can be described as an honest and diligent pursuit of truth. It could also mean the search for the meaning of life or the purpose of life, questions that have tormented humankind for centuries. The fact that we have not been able to find satisfactory answers to these questions does not mean there is no answer. It only means we have not searched with any degree of honesty. The search has to be both external and internal. We seek to ignore this crucial search because the sacrifices it demands are revolutionary. It means moving away from greed, selfishness, possessiveness, and dominance to love, compassion, understanding, and respect … and: So many people around the world have used nonviolence as a way to resolve a conflict that they faced in their lives. And they continue to use it everywhere all over the world there. And I think, in a way, nonviolence is our nature. Violence is not really our nature. If violence was our nature, we wouldn’t need military academies and martial arts institutes to teach us how to kill and destroy people. We ought to have been born with those instincts. But the fact that we have to learn the art of killing means that it’s a learned experience. And we can always unlearn it” … (more quotes on BetterWorldHeroe).

… At twenty-three Arun returned to India and worked as journalist and reporter for The Times of India. He, his wife Sunanda, and several colleagues started the successful economic initiative, India’s Center for Social unity, whose mission is to alleviate poverty and caste discrimination. The Center’s success has now spread to over 300 villages, improving the lives of more than 500,000 rural Indians. Having written eight books and hundreds of articles, Dr. Gandhi is an accomplished author and journalist. He published the Suburban Echo, a weekly, in Bombay from 1985 through 1987. Recently Arun envisioned and edited World Without Violence: Can Gandhi’s Dream Become Reality?, a collection of essays and poetry from noted international scientists, artists, and political and social leaders on the  ideals of nonviolence. This popular volume was published in October 1994 for the celebration of the  125th anniversary of Gandhiji’s birth … (full text, 2007).

… Arun’s stay with his grandfather coincided with the most tumultuous period in India’s struggle to free itself from British rule. His grandfather showed Arun firsthand the effects of a national campaign for liberation carried out through both violent and nonviolent means. For eighteen months, while Gandhi imparted lessons to his grandson, the young man was also witnessing world history unfold before his eyes. This combination set Arun on a course for life … (full text).

My life and my work are my message, and that should be carried on,” Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi once said. “Nobody should rest until the tears from the last person are wiped out.” Seven years ago, his grandson responded with the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, hosted by Christian Brothers University. Arun Gandhi now asks the same of the local, national, and global communities … // … Arun offers an example: A student in one of the peer mediation programs went home to find his parents having a heated argument. “‘I’m going to mediate,’ he told them. He sat his parents at opposite ends of the table, went through the steps of mediation, and calmed them down. His parents were so surprised they forgot what they were arguing about. When the youngster returned to the program, he told Arun, “‘Mr. Gandhi, can I be a mediator when I grow up – like you?’ Neither of us thought we would reach this much success,” Sunanda says, offering her own example. “Sometime, when [the students] sit back, they will recognize and remember [the teachings of nonviolence]. Even if the kids don’t know it now, they will recognize it and eventually be able to use it. That is success” (full text, Oct. 01, 1998).

… Declaring a war on terrorism was not, in his view, the answer. The causes of terrorism have to be eliminated. There have to be drastic changes in the relationships between different parts of the world: states, like individuals, have to build relationships that were based on more than self-interest but included respect/ understanding/acceptance/appreciation. Mr Gandhi urged the concept of trusteeship: we are trustees of our talents and wealth, which we need to use for other people as much as for ourselves. If necessary we must reduce our own standard of living so as to help bring peace to the world. We must act towards others out of compassion, not pity; above all, it was on the poor of the country that the fundamentalists thrive. Like his grandfather, Mr Gandhi advocates a friendly study of the world’s religions. We all need a greater modesty in our belief that we ‘possess’ the truth. Mahatma Gandhi never argued that he possessed the truth; he argued that he pursued the truth. Individuals, communities and states needed to understand that violence proceeds from anger. We need to understand our anger, and channel its energy into positive action. Above all, we need to avoid the arrogance of power which leads to recklessness and violence … (full text, December 3, 2002).

links:

Gandhism;

FamousWhy/Tags/Hindu;

Join us on the 9th of July (2009) for at one of our Exciting Pre-conference Sessions (for Lessons from My Grandfather);

Assassination of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi;

Categories on wikipedia:

• Indian philosophers;
• Nonviolence advocates;
• Mohandas Kara Gandhi;
• American Hindus;
• Scholars and leaders of nonviolence, or nonviolent resistance.

… Marshall Berman found the works of the young Marx – including the Communist Manifesto – spoke to him in a way that the dry tracts of orthodox Marxism he had been exposed to before did not. (full text).

… In sociology, in the writings of Marshall Berman, Faustian refers to the short-time perspective of society in modernity. It also refers to Faust’s desire in the second part of Goethe’s Faust, especially act V, to defeat the forces of nature and create a mechanical heaven on earth by draining the seabed and using it for farming … (Faustian on wikipedia).

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Marshall Berman – USA

He says: “Every book is a building and every building is a book.”

… Early in the 1960s, a little over forty years ago, I discovered the work of Sylvia Plath.  Alas, I discovered it (as most people did) at exactly the moment it stopped.   The London Observer, along with its story on her suicide, printed a whole page of her poems.  In the midst of “Daddy”, one of the  most riveting of those poems, Plath pulls herself up short and says, I began to talk like a Jew … (full longest text).

He says also: (What books are you currently reading?): Interpretation of Dreams, for a course I’m currently teaching: Political Theory – Plato to Marx. In class we discuss Freud’s dreams, his patient’s dreams and our own dreams. I also read a Colin Dexter detective story set in Oxford, a landscape I recently returned to after 40 years. I returned to Oxford last year to teach some workshops, and it was wild walking through these 18th century rooms, the same rooms I had walked through as an 18 year-old-kid … (full interview text, December 10, 2007).

Twilight of the Machines, by thomaspainescorner on March 4, 2009.

Marshall Berman reviews Peter Gay’s latest book, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy, in the fall issue of Dissent. He begins his review with a pair of dislcosures, the second of which leads to an interesting riff on Columbia at midcentury. This is perhaps in part because a shorter version of the review first appeared in Columbia Magazine last spring … (full text, December 26, 2008).

marshall berman vs. wallace berman, March 15, 2009.

… But this – along with a recent re-reading of Marshall Berman and this Mike Davis interview (ta to Savonarola) where he talks about Constructivism as one of the most valuable intellectual engagements with the city, albeit one that ended in (literal) anti-urbanism -  has made me think more than I am inclined to do about one of the central New Town tenets: the Modernist campaign against the street … (full interview text, 03/20/2007).

Find him and his publications on City College of New York;
on wikipedia /Bibliography; on Google Group-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

… Marshall Berman opted not to speak about the perils of modernity and asked if anyone in the audience had seen Don’t Mess with the Zohan. I might have been the only person to raise a hand. (Damn those NYPL elitists.) Berman said, “I don’t know much about the Atlantic Yards project, but see Zohan… It’s good for your morale to see that it’s possible to blow these [real estate developer] creeps away.” He’s right, the movie has a strong anti-gentrification message … (full text, June 19, 2008).

… Marshall Berman (right), Professor of Political Science, City College and the Graduate Center, was the closest thing to a defender of the government, citing “the very larger and strong libertarian opposition to eminent domain” and warning that the backlash to eminent domain might make it “impossible to create public facilities” … (full text, June 20, 2008).

… Throughout his life, Berman observed the way different generations come to the square and learn from each other about the possibilities of the world. Despite the corporate control prevalent in Times Square today Berman is hopeful that new generations will find ways to take ownership of the Square and return it to its role as a crucible for modern identity. (full text, 05.02.06).

… No es casual que el documental comience con una cita de Todo lo sólido se desvanece en el aire, el libro del crítico marxista estadounidense Marshall Berman que analiza el fenómeno del modernismo y su impacto en la vida contemporánea: “Ser moderno es encontrarnos en un entorno que nos promete aventuras, poder, diversión, crecimiento, transformación de nosotros mismos y del mundo – y que, al mismo tiempo, amenaza con destruir todo lo que tenemos, todo lo que conocemos, todo lo que somos.” Gee comenta: “La cita de Marshall Berman es sobre el hecho de que, para nosotros, la condición moderna implica tratar de vivir en medio de la destrucción continua de todo lo que nos rodea. Ya sea el tejido físico de las ciudades en las que vivimos o la destrucción forzosa de nuestros modos de vida tradicionales. En el film Joy Division hay una conexión entre la decadencia y la destrucción del viejo Manchester y su eventual reconstrucción, y la vida y la trayectoria de los miembros de la banda … (full text, ‎Mar 5, 2009‎).

… Viele haben die Desinfektion des Times Square beklagt, die meisten sahen jedoch bislang nicht so schwarz wie Koolhaas. Der Urbanist Marshall Berman, bekennender Marxist und Koolhaas-Anhänger, schreibt in seinem Times-Square-Buch, dass “der Kreuzzug, die Straße zu töten”, gescheitert sei, und beobachtet noch immer “modernes Leben” … (full text, 22. März 2009).

Todo lo sólido se desvanece en el aire: la experiencia de la modernidad, 18.12.2008.

… What is the American Dream? Does it mean having a “better life” by creating a home and a community, living together for generations, building and tending relationships to one another and to a place? Or do we create a “better life” by moving up, moving out, removing the old, replacing with the new?
Between 1949 and 1973 urban renewal, a program of the U.S. government, bulldozed 2,500 neighborhoods in 993 American cities and dispossessed one million people. Roots got cut, neighbors and families became separated, languages and cultures were destroyed, and social bonds were broken … (announcing a debate, at the New York Public Library NYPL.org, for June 18, 2008).

… ¿Qué pasó con la izquierda legal? ¿Prefirió el debate parlamentario de las ideas? ¿Si supuestamente creía en la toma del poder por las armas, por qué no lo hizo? Quizá no lo consideró conveniente. O no tuvo coraje. Ser marxista, recordémoslo, no es sinónimo de tomar necesariamente las armas. En el hipotético caso de haberlas tomado, quizá lo hubiese hecho con una metodología diferente a la senderista. No lo sabemos. Estamos especulando. Un marxista, además, puede ser un académico como Marshall Berman o José Aricó … (full text, 11 de marzo de 2009).

Marshall Berman is a difficult writer to pigeonhole: a Marxist working in a post-ideological world, a living remnant of the old and splintered New York left, a passionate lover of all good art—high and low—and an incurable urban romantic. A glance at the titles of his previous books—The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society; Adventures in Marxism; and his seminal work, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity—might lead the uninitiated to the wrong conclusions. Though Berman is a professor of political science at City College of New York, his prose is anything but academic. And despite his Marxist credentials, his latest release, On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square, is a compulsively readable tribute to the hurly-burly of popular art and commerce. Recently, Metropolis executive editor Martin C. Pedersen spoke to Berman about the history of Times Square, its revitalization, and why he continues to be drawn to it … :

• … One of the interesting themes in the book is the role women played in shaping Times Square. Tell us about how their roles changed over time.Historically in the West (as well as in China and Japan) the theater was a gathering place for women. In the nineteenth century there were much more rigid sexual bounds than there are now and not that many places where women could go on their own in public. Times Square immediately became one of the places where they could go. Many of the buildings were boardinghouses for young women who came here—whether from the end of the world or the wilds of Queens or Brooklyn—hoping to make it in the Big City. There was probably a larger concentration of women there than anyplace else in New York.
• Eventually Times Square became a hostile place to women. What happened? During the 1930s, three of the big theatres became burlesque houses and the street became masculinized. By the end of the decade 42nd Street in particular, the Deuce—the block between Broadway and Eighth Avenue—became a place where women were scared to go. It wasn’t only hostile to women but also hostile to a particular kind of homosexual, called “fairies,” and the form of homosexuality that took over the Deuce was rough trade, which pushed the fairies out.
• Times Square becomes even more hostile to women in the 60s and 70s. What prompts that? After the war all the theatres become cheap cinemas, showing westerns, combat films, basically all male cinema. So it’s cheap movies, which is good news, but the bad news is they’re not places where boys and girls would go on a date together. They’re places where somebody would take the subway with the guys and watch a triple-feature of World War II movies, plus war newsreels. And it’s fascinating and depressing how this place that was very open to women becomes very exclusive and pushes them away. In the ’70s this becomes particularly gross, as the movies become pornographic and scary … (full interview text, April 17, 2006).

links:

Marxists Internet Archive;

The City College of New York;

The Power Elite, by C. Wright Mills, 1956;

New Left Review;

Nowoczesność i jej wrogowie, czyli o pogardzie dla życia;

New Humanist, the magazine for free thinkers;

Michel Foucault: … his Works: … , … Further reading: … ;

A bit of Marxism on wikipedia:

• Karl Marx;
• Modernism;
• Post-Modernism;
• Anti-modernism;
• Marxist Humanism;
• The Praxis Group;
• Faustian.

Faust, or Faustus;

Categories on wikipedia:

• 20th-century philosopher;
• 21st-century philosophers;
• American philosophers;
• American socialists;
• Jewish American writers;
• Literary critics;
• Marxist theorists;
• Political scientists;
• Urban theorists;
• Faust – as a category;
• Literary concepts;
• Sociology;
• Cultural history;
• Goethe’s Faust.

Find her on the Indonesian wikipedia.

Selanjutnya! – Tempat Bercermin: Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim: Sudah lama kami tak bertemu. “Bertahun-tahun, Helvy, begitu lama…,” katanya saat saya rangkul. Saya menatap perempuan di hadapan saya dengan sangat bangga. Perempuan yang tak pernah berhenti menginspirasi saya dan mungkin banyak lagi perempuan di negeri ini: Ratna Indraswasi Ibrahim! “Mahasiswa-mu baru telepon setengah dua belas malam untuk acara pagi ini!” ujarnya. “Kalau bukan karena kamu, Helvy, aku tidak akan datang,” katanya pura-pura ngambek. “Sebulan setengah lalu memang sudah dihubungi. Habis itu tak ada kabar. Aku kira tidak jadi.” Saya rangkul lagi dia. “Maafkan mereka ya, Mbak,” kata saya mewakili 70 mahasiswa JBSI Angkatan 2003 yang saya bimbing bersama tiga dosen lainnya dalam KKL (Kuliah Kerja Lapangan) di Malang ini. Salah satu acara yang mereka adakan bekerjasama dengan Universitas Malang adalah menghadirkan diskusi mengenai karya-karya Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim, pagi itu. (on her blog).

• The Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim blogspot.
• Her blog on WordPress (in an Indonesian language).

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Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim – Indonesia

She works for Bakti Nurani (named on mitra netra online), for the Entropic Foundation, and for Yayasan Pajoeng.

She says: “Conflicts and wars are awful because they disable more and more people in every sense of the word”.

Find her and her publications on goodreads; on National Library of Australia; on open Library.org; on Google Group-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Blog-search.

… For 13 years she chaired a Non-Government Organization (NGO) for disabled people, then founded an NGO concerned with environmental issues. She also works for Yayasan Kebudayaan Panjoeng, a cultural foundation to stimulate and preserve local history and the arts. Her once secluded 93-year old home in central Malang is now overshadowed by a hotel on one side, and a high school on the other. When prayers and public announcements are made on what must be East Java’s most raucous and deafening sound system, the mind hibernates for self-protection. It hardly seems the ideal environment for creativity, but Ratna resting on a bed in her library while she structures her next sentence to be transcribed by secretary and poet Ragil Sukriwul, doesn’t seem to mind. She has many visitors who bring her stories that may eventually find a way into her work. Then there are the students seeking the magic elixir: ‘Please tell me how to write.’ Ratna’s answer is blunt and direct: “Just do it!” So what sort of courses should they take? “Education is not the same as intelligence.” Relationships between the sexes are a major theme in her stories, with situations growing out of male domination of women in a society that’s overwhelmingly dogmatic and masculine, and often violent. Her female characters are usually semi-urban Muslims struggling with life and injustice, battling to raise families while maintaining a sense of self-worth. Their situations are real. Her popularity depends on her readers identifying with the characters and their daily lives. Surprisingly many of her admirers are men. There are two main streams of women’s literature in Indonesia, the traditional romantic novel (love lit) and the new kid on the shelves, sastra wangi (literally ‘perfumed writing’) but known elsewhere as chick lit … (full text, June 17, 2007).

On 1000peacewomen:  … Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim (born 1960) lives in East Java, Indonesia. At the age of 13, she was stricken with polio and other orthopedic diseases that permanently hindered the functions of her arms and legs. Her family encouraged her never to lose hope in spite of her disabilities. She writes short stories about discrimination against women that are published regularly in Indonesian newspapers. Ratna is also involved in local campaigns to improve accessibility for people living with disabilities and to save the urban forest in her hometown, Malang. Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim is a well-known woman writer based in Malang, a city in East Java, Indonesia, whose short stories are regularly published by Indonesian national newspapers.

Her works convey strong messages about discrimination against women in Indonesian society. She says that her writing is a reflection on culture and the self. “Women are unfairly treated since early childhood. I see a lot of girls deprived of their playing time because they have to help with house chores. It doesn’t happen with boys,” she observes.

Ratna started writing short stories in 1975. “My mother had a large collection of novels and I loved to read them,” she recounts. Her reading intensified after she was stricken with polio and orthopedic disease which permanently impaired the functions of her arms and legs. “The infection started when I was about 10 and went on for about three years. In the beginning it was quite frustrating, but my mother supported me all the way,” she says.

Ratna’s family saw to it that she went to a regular public school until she reached college.She is highly influenced by her mother, who raised the family by herself after her husband died. “She encouraged me to read and write,” Ratna recalls, “and she was very independent.” Living with disability also made Ratna aware of how certain groups are excluded in the society. Families and communities tend to treat their members who are disabled as a curse and often prevent them from being seen in public. Children with disabilities have very little access to education, especially in poor and uneducated communities.

Ratna points out that in a patriarchal society, women with disabilities are often subjected to harassment and sexual violence.

She urges a change in society’s perception of the disabled and better government services in addressing the problem of accessibility in public places. She disapproves of the Indonesian government policies that are directed towards giving aid or training to persons with disability. “People living with disability are denied access to education and independence. They are perceived as being forever dependent on their families and are discriminated against in the provision of education, job training and job opportunities,” wrote Ratna in an article published by Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights.

Ratna has been working to promote the rights of the disabled since 1977, when she founded Bakti Nurani, an NGO working for persons with disability in Malang. She advocates for more accessibility in public places, which would enable persons with disability to be more independent and to participate in society. She participates in hearings at the local parliament in Malang to voice her concerns.

“I proposed to make Malang a pilot project for accessibility in public places. It should be easier to start from a relatively small city like this, where people know each other and cooperation is easier,” she says. She has also worked to improve the living conditions of persons living with disability in Indonesia.

She was invited by Mobility International, an organization promoting mobility for people with disabilities, for leadership training in the United States. In 1995, she attended the Women’s International Conference in Beijing and in 1997, she delivered a speech at the Women’s Congress in Washington. The international recognition she has gained has not made it easier for her to obtain assistance from the Indonesian government. “I can’t wait around for government support. I have to continue developing my network to be able to change existing conditions,” she explains.

Ratna doesn’t stop at promoting the interests of the disabled. “The problem of distribution of power is evident in many ways,” she observes. She was part of a group that founded the Entropic Foundation (Yayasan Entropic), which works on environment issues.

In 1998, she initiated Yayasan Pajoeng, an organization working on cultural issues. She is also actively engaged in a campaign against the relocation of an urban forest in Malang. With her colleagues at the Rainbow Forum, she facilitates discussions and meetings to make citizens aware that they are about to lose one of the most important elements of their environment. “If anything is worth changing for the better, we might as well start from our own home,” she declares.

Indeed, Ratna starts from her own home. Her door is open to anyone who wants to talk about women’s rights, environment and culture.

Her house is a meeting point for artists, activists and students who later formed the Rainbow Forum (Forum Pelangi). Many young people come to the meetings to develop their critical consciousness. Ratna has also helped initiate and maintain a journal called “Naswari,” which focuses on women’s issues and gender equality in the community.

Ratna lives in Malang with two assistants who act as her nurses and help her type her stories. She is determined to continue upgrading her knowledge by taking part in various workshops and seminars. She supports herself by writing, giving lectures and renting out rooms in her house to medical students doing internships in a hospital nearby. Ratna is known to be a creative, optimistic and cheerful person.

She believes that writing is a process that involves getting a lot of information and opinions from other people. Her assistants have benefited from her creative process. “I learned to write by listening and typing her stories,” says her assistant, Rini, who has helped Ratna develop a story based on her own experience as migrant worker. In 1993, Ratna received the Women with Achievement Award (Perempuan Berprestasi) from the Indonesian government. A number of her short stories have been chosen best stories of the year by an Indonesian national newspaper. (1000peacewomen).

links:

SOME NOTES ON THE DESCRIPTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SHORT STORIES IN INDONESIA;

Brawijaya University: PRASETYA online, english version;

Indonesian Literature.

Philip Pullman CBE (born 19 October 1946) is an English writer. He is the best-selling author of His Dark Materials (a trilogy of fantasy novels), and a number of other books … and: Perspective on religion: Pullman is a supporter of the British Humanist Association and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. New Yorker journalist Laura Miller has described Pullman as one of England’s most outspoken atheists … (full long text, last modified on 6 March 2009).

Philip Pullman is one of the most highly acclaimed children’s authors of the decade. He has been on the shortlist of just about every major children’s book award in the last few years, and has won the Smarties Prize (Gold Award, 9-11 age category) for THE FIREWORK-MAKER’S DAUGHTER and the prestigious Carnegie Medal for NORTHERN LIGHTS. He was the first children’s author ever to win the Whitbread Prize for THE AMBER SPYGLASS and he won the ‘Carnegie of Carnegies’ in 2007 for NORTHERN LIGHTS – the favourite Carnegie winner in the past 70 years. (on House of Legends).

He says: (What advice would I give to anyone who wants to write?): Don’t listen to any advice, that’s what I’d say. Write only what you want to write. Please yourself. YOU are the genius, they’re not. Especially don’t listen to people (such as publishers) who think that you need to write what readers say they want. Readers don’t always know what they want. I don’t know what I want to read until I go into a bookshop and look around at the books other people have written, and the books I enjoy reading most are books I would never in a million years have thought of myself. So the only thing you need to do is forget about pleasing other people, and aim to please yourself alone. That way, you’ll have a chance of writing something that other people WILL want to read, because it’ll take them by surprise. It’s also much more fun writing to please yourself. (full interview text).

His official website.

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Philip Pullman – England

Watch these videos:

• Philip Pullman’s keynote, 10.01 min, Feb. 28, 2009;
• Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials, Documentary Part 1 of 7, 06.00 min, Dec 17, 2007;
• Philip Pullman on Édouard Manet, 24.31 min, Feb 23, 2009;
• shortly with Charli Rose, 2.44 min, Jan. 14, 2008;
• Philip Pullman reads Paradise Lost, 2.16 min, Dec 9, 2008.

Last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, caused controversy by praising the National Theatre’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials – a work that has been interpreted by some as anti-Christian. The two men met at the theatre on Monday to discuss the meaning of religion in art and literature -and its enduring relevance to the education of our children. This is the record of their conversation … (full long interview text).

Listen on your computer this podcast: Guardian book club podcast, Philip Pullman, 47 min, he talks to John Mullan about plot, morality, language and Milton in His Dark Materials.

… His Dark Materials: His Dark Materials consists of Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. The first volume of the trilogy, “Northern Lights”, won the Carnegie Medal for children’s fiction in the UK in 1995. The Amber Spyglass, the last volume, was awarded both 2001 Whitbread Prize for best children’s book and the Whitbread Book of the Year prize in January 2002, the first children’s book to receive that award. The series won popular acclaim in late 2003, taking third place in the BBC’s Big Read poll. Pullman has written two companion pieces to the trilogy entitled, Lyra’s Oxford, and the newly released Once Upon a Time in the North. A third companion piece Pullman refers to as the “green book” will expand upon his character Will. He has plans for one more, the as-yet-unwritten The Book of Dust, which is tentatively set for release in 2009. This book is not a continuation of the trilogy but will include characters and events from His Dark Materials. In 2005 Pullman was announced as joint winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children’s literature … (full long text).

Find him and his publications on amazon; on Internet Speculative Fiction Database; on IMDb; on wikipedia /Bibliography; on Random House; on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search (with Fan di Philip Pullman, with alt.books.philip-pullman, and with group directory, all groups, lookup Philip Pullman); on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search; on Google News-search.

… Pullman, who was once described as “semi-satanic” for his stance on religion, accused novelists of letting down their readers by failing to use their full potential to explore the moral questions of good and evil, life and death. Fiction would lose its value unless writers did more to tackle the great moral dilemmas of our time. “Fantasy, and fiction in general, is failing to do what it might be doing,” he said. “It has unlimited potential to explore all sorts of metaphysical and moral questions, but it is not doing that.” Described by a columnist as “the most dangerous author in Britain” for his children’s trilogy His Dark Materials, Pullman this year became the first writer of children’s books to win the Whitbread best book award for his final installment, the Amber Spyglass … (full text, 12 August 2002).

More Quotations (a short excerpt from wikiquote):

• I knew I was telling a story that would be gripping enough to take readers with it, and I have a high enough opinion of my readers to expect them to take a little difficulty in their stride. My readers are intelligent: I don’t write for stupid people. Now mark this carefully, because otherwise I shall be misquoted and vilified again — we are all stupid, and we are all intelligent. The line dividing the stupid from the intelligent goes right down the middle of our heads. Others may find their readership on the stupid side: I don’t. I pay my readers the compliment of assuming that they are intellectually adventurous … (full text, Interview at Achuka Children’s Books).
• Dark matter is what my research team is looking for. No one knows what it is. There’s more stuff out there in the universe than we can see, that’s the point. We can see the stars and the galaxies and the things that shine, but for it all to hang together and not fly apart, there needs to be a lot more of it — to make gravity work, you see. But no one can detect it. So there are lots of different research projects trying to find out what it is, and this is one of them. … We think it’s some kind of elementary particle. Something quite different from anything discovered so far. But the particles are very hard to detect. Dr. Mary Malone, in Ch.4: Trepanning.
• A sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a real and important story, a sense of being connected to other people, to people who are not here any more, to those who have gone before us. And a sense of being connected to the universe itself. All those things were promised and summed up in the phrase, The Kingdom of Heaven. But if the Kingdom is dead, we still need those things. We can’t live without those things because it’s too bleak, it’s too bare and we don’t need to. We can find a way of creating them for ourselves if we think in terms of a Republic of Heaven. This is not a Kingdom but a Republic, in which we are all free and equal citizens, with — and this is the important thing — responsibilities. With the responsibility to make this place into a Republic of Heaven for everyone. Not to live in it in a state of perpetual self-indulgence, but to work hard to make this place as good as we possibly can.

He says also: … Frightening people is a very good way to make them passive and supine. You can be terrified into an abject denial of everything and you don’t want to know about it: you just shut your eyes and your ears. But the most useful, the most helpful and most energising thing is to say: “You can do this, and this, and this, and you can press your Government to do that.” Environmentalists need to know something about basic storytelling in order to make their words effective. Samuel Johnson apparently said something I find very useful to remember: “The true aim of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.” Research is much easier than writing, so the temptation is to shove all the research in. But page after page after page of the stuff goes by and, of course, people stop reading. I suppose the real story, the basic story, the story I would like to hear, see, read, is the story about how connected we are, not only with one another but also with the place we live in. And how it’s almost infinitely rich, but it’s in some danger; and that despite the danger, we can do something to overcome it. People feel helpless when they see pictures of devastated forests cut down and the glaciers melting and the poor polar bear sweating on its bare rock in the sea. “What can we do, what can we do?” People need to be told what it is that they can do. And they also need to feel that civil action, civil society, civil forms of involvement such as Parliament, local councils and so on, are there for a purpose, should be used and can be influenced … (full interview text, 18 Jan 2008).

Another video, Inside His Dark Materials, Episode 1, 60.00 min, Aug 28, 2008 … This video is accessible  only inside of the uk, means, it is set free for english schools.

links:

The Convention Modern Liberty, what next;

Henry Porter’s and Anthony Barnett’s views on What’s next;

Categories on wikipedia:

• English children’s writers;
  
• English fantasy writers;
• English novelists;
• British Book Awards;
  
• Guardian award winners;
• British humanists;
• English atheists;
• Atheist thinkers and activists;
• Commanders of the Order of the British Empire;
• Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature.

Karsten Weitzenegger is a political scientist specialising in international development cooperation. He is an expert on developing participatory organisational changes in the field of social and economic policy. His work has focused on institution building for financial and non-financial business development services, ownership and governance issues, and also investment and export promotion activities or products from developing and transition countries. As long term expert with the United Nations, Mr Weitzenegger has provided advice to the Government of Sao Tome and Principe on the design of the national economic policy and poverty alleviation programs. He has also recently advised banks, business associations and vocational training authorities on business services and product development. Key Qualifications: … (full long text). See also his CV on South East European Cooperation Network.

• Karsten’s monthly newsletter.
• His blog on WordPress.

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Karsten Weitzenegger – Germany

Only broad, sustainable economic growth creates opportunities for employment that can move large sections of the population out of poverty. Organisations that provide underprivileged men and women with access to education and capital enable them to contribute toward growth as well as benefit from it. Free market access and legal security in conjunction with modern communication and transport infrastructures set the stage for a good business climate and thus the international competitiveness of developing and transition countries. At the same time, industrial countries can help reduce world poverty by respecting fair-trade conditions and social and ecological standards … (full text).

Find him and his publications on EPIN (economy policy institutes network); on dgCommunities; on XING; on business fights poverty; on Google Book-search.

The October 2006 Newsletter for international co-operation professionals on economic and social development by Karsten Weitzenegger, International Development Cooperation has a Special Edition on Post-conflict economies. There is a report on the conference Private Sector Development and Peacebuilding, relevant Organisations and Websites, Training Events and Learning Materials, Publications and Tools. Free subscription by sending an e-mail. The Web version is available on October 2006 from weitzenegger.de.

Some Google groups he is participating:

• International Cooperation and Economic Development;
• Caribbean Regional Integration;
• XING – Entwicklungs und Zusammenarbeit / le réseau mondial de networking professionel;
• AGEGjobs;
• bit . listserv . slovak-l;
• More on Google Group-search.

UNDP Crisis Prevention and Recovery: The Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) is one of nine major bureaus within the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Consistent with UNDP’s mission to promote sustainable human development, the focus is on the development dimension of crisis situations. Currently developing a new website for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (CPR) information, which will be available in October 2006. (Contributed by Karsten Weitzenegger).

On Google Blog-search you find:

• … In the following I list some virtual communities, where economic development professionals meet and share knowledge. If you recommend more, please add them as a comment … (full text);
• … The Accra Agenda for Action is the product of an unprecedented alliance of development partners – developing and donor countries, emerging economies, UN and multilateral institutions, global funds and civil society organisations. They all participated in the discussions leading up to the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, hosted by the Government of Ghana and organised by OECD and the World Bank, in Accra … (full long text);
• … The October 2006 Newsletter for international co-operation professionals on economic and social development by Karsten Weitzenegger (http://www.weitzenegger.de) has a Special Edition on Post-conflict economies. There is a report on the conference Private Sector Development and Peacebuilding, relevant Organisations and Websites, Training Events and Learning Materials, Publications and Tools … (full text);
• Keine Chance als Young Professional in der EZ?
• AGEG WIRAM NEWS NETWORK – This Newsletter is a summary and analysis of trends in economic development in international co-operation policy … ;
• Empowering Cybernetic Codevelopment with Africa.

He writes:

• …Poverty Impact Assessment (PIA) helps decision makers determine strategic choices for public actions so as to have the greatest impact on reducing poverty and achieving pro-poor growth. PIA provides a better understanding about potential winners and losers of an intervention and thus strengthens a results-oriented approach. PIA helps to understand stakeholders and institutions that influence and are influenced by an intervention understand the importance and inter-relationship of specific transmission channels through which changes are transmitted to the stakeholders assess the likely positive and negative outcomes for stakeholders taking into account multi-dimensionality of poverty assess the reliability of data/information and knowledge gaps. Using PIA, policy-makers can estimate the likely quantitative and qualitative outcomes of the policy for poor groups, identify potential risks and assess the reliability of available data. Through involving people with different interests and approaches, ex-ante Impact Assessment helps to save resources, and design interventions to be better targeted to achieve their goals and avoid unintended harmful consequences. Thus it also contributes to strengthening the transparency and accountability of democratically elected governments, and encourages consistency of policy-making across policy areas … (full text, March 14, 2009);
• … Aus Anlass der Vertragsstaatenkonferenzen der UN-Konvention über die biologische Vielfalt und des Protokolls über die biologische Sicherheit organisieren wir einen Internationalen Kongreß zur Zukunft von Lebensmitteln und Landwirtschaft … // … Im deutschen Organisationskomitee arbeiten zusammen: Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft (AbL), der BUND, Greenpeace, der Evangelische Entwicklungsdienst, IFOAM (der Weltverband des Ökolandbaus), GENET (ein europaweites Netzwerk gentechnikkritischer Organisationen) , Gen-ethisches Netzwerk (GeN), Heinrich Böll Stiftung und andere Verbände … (full text).

The value chain, also known as value chain analysis, is a concept from business management that was first described and popularized by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. The concept has been extended beyond individual organizations. It can apply to whole supply chains and distribution networks. By exploiting the upstream and downstream information flowing along the value chain, the firms may try to bypass the intermediaries creating new business models, or in other ways create improvements in its value system. The value chain describes the full range of activities that firms and workers do to bring a product from its conception to its end use and beyond. This includes activities such as design, production, marketing, distribution and support to the final consumer. The activities that comprise a value chain can be contained within a single firm or divided among different firms. Value chain activities can produce goods or services, and can be contained within a single geographical location or spread over wider areas. The competitiveness of firms not only depends on the functioning of suppliers and buyers within a cluster, but also and often most importantly, on the entire chain at the national and global level. The value chain approach helps to identify all the enterprises that contribute to the production of a good or service within and beyond a cluster and shows which actions are needed to support these enterprises … (full text).

Tagung Migration(en) und Entwicklung(en), Transformation von Paradigmen, Organisationen und Geschlechterordnungen, Entwicklungspolitik für, mit und durch Migrant/innen: Wie geht das?
Karsten Weitzenegger, Dipl.-Pol., AGEG Consultants eG, 11 pdf-Seiten.

links:

South East European Educational Cooperation Network;

AGEG Consultants;

CGAP’s Virtual Conference Highlights: How will microfinance weather the financial crisis storm? Dec 1, 2008;

Impact and Implications of Food Crisis;

Summary of the CGAP Virtual Conference: Microfinance and the Financial Crisis;

Financial Crisis Glossary – a guide to the buzzwords of the crisis;

The CGAP’s blog;

TA for Information and Communication Technology …

The UN Peacebuilding Portal;

The Industry Speaks on the Financial Crisis, Dec 1, 2008;

Initialement créé en 1976, en tant que Centre universitaire d’écologie humaine et des sciences de l’environnement (CUEH), le Groupe Ecologie humaine a rejoint le Pôle en Sciences de l’Environnement de l’Université de Genève en janvier 2008 …

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Sister Anna Hoare has been working for peace all her life. Her major achievement was the creation of the first Protestant and Catholic integrated school, Lagan College, in Northern Ireland. Today there are over 50 integrated schools in Northern Ireland, with a total student body of over 12,000. Her work has been a beacon to the communities she has directly served and an exemplum of what is possible in one of the most unstable and violent regions. In 2003 at the age of eighty-six Sister Anna Hoare returned to live with ‘The Community of the Sisters of the Love of God’ in their convent in Oxford. Her residence there, in one of England’s most famous university towns, could not be more different from her last abode: a small house situated in the middle of the conflict zone in Northern Ireland, where she served for thirty-one years. It is difficult to distinguish where her religious duties end and where her activism begins – so finely intertwined as they are … (1000peacewomen 1/2).

She says: … “We all share a common humanity that enables us to live and work together”.

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Sorry, no photo found for Anna Hoare Sr. – England

She works for the Community of the Sisters of the Love of God (find them also on wikipedia), and for the Lagan College.

1000peacewomen 2/2: … What Sr Anna Hoare achieved in Northern Ireland was radical in its intent and has had far reaching consequences that perhaps even she, at the time she began her work, could not have envisaged. In a region that has been torn apart by sectarian hatred and violence her work has helped to get Protestants and Catholics closer to understanding and coexistence.

Anna Hoare was born in Bath, England in 1917, one year before the World War I ended. After her schooling and obtaining a first degree she moved to Oxford where she completed her M.A. in Theology. From 1943-1948 she was based at Wistow Training Center where, with Gunter Schweitzer, she provided ecumenical training to refugees from Nazi Germany. There, she lectured on Old Testament Studies and early Christianity.

For the Nazis, any trace of Jewish ancestry was sufficient proof of ‘Jewishness’ and hence, impurity. The trainees at Wistow were German Christians, many of whom were oblivious to the Jewish identity of their forbears. They considered themselves, above all, to be German and many planned to return to Germany and help in its reconstruction.

After her time at Wistow Anna Hoare lived as a recluse, then as a pilgrim. In 1970 she received her calling and on 16th November of that year she was confessed. ‘God pushed me to take my vows,’ she says. She attempted to live in her Order’s community but strongly felt that her calling was to be a pilgrim, living, as she says, ‘without any props.’ She adds that ‘I felt God was asking me to go out into the world with nothing and that He would lead me.’

The Order into which she had been confessed could not understand such a choice; it was then that she had the great fortune to meet and speak to the Mother Superior of the ‘Community of the Sisters of the Love of God.’ She received Episcopal permission from the Mother Superior to be actively engaged as a social worker.

During this period Sr Anna lived in Yugoslavia, Turkey, Israel, France and Greece, and in these years she learnt a range of languages. In 1972 Mother Teresa asked the ‘Community of the Sisters of the Love of God’ (hence, ‘Community’) to join her Order in Northern Ireland in their peace-building work. As the ‘Community’ is an enclosed contemplative society it could not accept Mother Teresa’s offer.

Sr Anna, however, who stood both within the ‘Community’ but beyond its covenant, accepted the behest of the Mother Superior. If the period in which Sr Anna worked with German refugees was an important watermark in her life, the second and perhaps most significant contribution she would make to peace efforts was her work in Northern Ireland.

When, in 1972, she moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, it was the early years of ‘The Troubles’ – the increased violence that began in the late 60s and only came to an end in the 90s. As a result, the prevailing ‘ghettoization’ of Catholics and Protestants was exacerbated and the British Army was called onto the streets, an act which intensified yet hostility and violence. From 1968- 1994 over 3,5000 people died and over 35,000 were injured due to sectarian violence.

One of the most brutal periods in Ireland’s modern history was brought to an end by the peace process ‘which included the declaration of ceasefire by some paramilitary organizations, the withdrawal of most troops from the streets and the creation of a new police force in a series of reforms. This declaration is most notably known as the Belfast Agreement (commonly known as the Good Friday Agreement),’ says Sr Anna.

Throughout her life Sr. Anna’s leitmotif has been, ‘so that they are one.’ With this in mind, under the umbrella of an organization that she established – ‘Children’s Community Holidays’ – she initiated joint holidays for children from both confessions. As a result of this scheme up to one thousand school children every year spend their holidays in Northern Ireland. For many children this has been the first contact they ever had with children from other confessions. Following the success of this program she began another initiative, ‘All Children Together’ and from this was born, in 1981, the first integrated Protestant and Catholic school in Northern Ireland, Lagan College.

In a region where ecumenical differences are frequently portrayed in political terms – a program that unites the two groups, not just at the discussion table, but in a process where they live, learn and make friends with one another and hopefully, where such artificial barriers are irrevocably broken down – Lagan College is an milestone symbol of peace. Through theological advice and political support of the community, Sr Anna has worked with school children, parents and teachers of Lagan College. As other integrated schools have been set up (by 1999 there were fifty such schools with a total enrolment of over 12,000 students) she has offered her services and her guidance to them.

Once Lagan College was set up she began to fundraise for two chaplains: one Catholic, one Protestant. In 1995 she established a foundation to insure that the school would continue to run smoothly, funds would be available in a strong spiritual atmosphere. She lectured worldwide on the political situation and the peace movement in Northern Ireland. As a tirelessly governor, trustee and fundraiser for the foundation, Sr Anna worked to insure that young people have the opportunity to learn about one another and to be tolerant about other denominations and religions. Therefore her fundraising for Lagan College has continued unabated.

While Lagan College has been the focal point of her peace work she has also played a central role in the women’s peace movement in Northern Ireland, and in this regard she was one of the founding members of the ‘Women’s Coalition’, an organization which has worked on justice and peace issues. Her work with young people of both confessions and the creation of Lagan College has timely helped in placating the tense and often hostile relationships between Catholics and Protestants. The potential for violence was great; suburbs, schools, and leisure centers were separated along sectarian lines.

Lagan College’s purpose is to break down barriers of ‘us’ and ‘them’ by fostering a climate of reconciliation and understanding. Students from both denominations study together and learn how to co-exist peacefully with one another. As more and more alumni emerge from Lagan College and Northern Ireland’s other integrated schools it is hoped that by sharing their experiences with their colleagues, families and friends they can produce a society in which peace and tolerance are not regarded as an aberration, but as the norm. Northern Ireland’s children will, in this way, be an example to their elders, an example of what is possible.

Sr Anna’s life outside of her Order has often demanded a superb ‘art of survival’. She herself, however, is dismissive of her own efforts and says, ‘the time was ripe for such an initiative.’ Sr. Anna is now completely blind, and yet remains energetic, forthright, and most importantly, a guiding force for the College. (on 1000peacewomen).

links:

SAOIRSE32 – Archives;

UCL Poster Competition 2004/2005 Gallery;

Community of the SISTERS OF THE LOVE OF GOD:

• also on Padre Usera;
• on New Habits: black and white it isn’t;
• on Anglican Religeous Communities.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

(ENS) – Brazil’s first female indigenous lawyer makes her legal debut today in Washington, DC. Joenia Batista de Carvalho, 30, a Wapixana woman who is one of this year’s Reebok Human Rights awardees, is presenting her people’s land rights case to the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights. On behalf of the Indigenous Council of Roraima, she will ask this branch of the Organization of American States to intervene in a landmark battle for ancestral indigenous land known as Raposa Serra do Sol. The Rainforest Foundation US is co-filing the petition with the Indigenous Council of Roraima. Batista’s work is fully supported by the U.S. branch of The Rainforest Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in New York City, London, and Oslo founded in 1989 by Sting and Trudie Styler … // … The Raposa Serra do Sol territory in Roraima state is home to the Macuxi, Patamona, Ingaricó, Wapichana, and Taurepang peoples … // … Joenia Batista de Carvalho is representing the Indigenous Council of Roraima before the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights … (full long text).

ON all her official papers, she is known as Joênia Batista de Carvalho. But that is not the real name of the first Indian woman to become a lawyer in Brazil, just a name a clerk randomly selected when her parents were first brought from their Amazon village to have their births registered. Whether her preoccupation with issues of cultural identity and autonomy stems from that incident, Ms. Batista is not sure. Still, when she went to the United States earlier this year to receive a Reebok Prize for her human rights work, she chose to accept the award as Joênia Wapixana, using the name of the tribe to which she belongs. (full text).

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Joênia Batista de Carvalho – Brazil

Watch this video in portugese: Indigenous lawyer tells of fight for Amazon land on 11 Dec 08, 2.16 min, 10 December 2008.

She says: … “Peace, to us indigenous people, is living with dignity, quietly, with our families, in our community, in our land, free of threats, invasions, destruction, persecutions and death”. (1000peacewomen).

For the first time in the history of the Supreme Court, an indian rises to the podium to make oral arguments. The first is also by a woman, lawyer Joênia Batista de Carvalho of the Wapichana people. Pela primeira vez na história do Supremo, um índio sobe à tribuna para fazer uma sustentação oral. A estréia é de uma mulher: a advogada Joênia Batista de Carvalho, do povo Wapichana. (on dotsub.com).

She works for Conselho Indígena de Roraima CIR – named: on upr-info.org; on apontador; on WordPress.com.

She says also: … “We are accused of being thieves in our own land, of being invaders. We are slandered, we are discriminated against. This must come to an end”.
“It falls upon this Court to enforce what we’ve been hearing for a long time – that traditional indigenous lands go well beyond mere houses”.
“Many people do not know that indigenous lands cannot be characterised only by dwellings. They also include areas where people fish, hunt, walk, maintain sacred places, where we maintain spirituality, where our culture is maintained” … (full text, 10/11/2008).

Find her on RHR award; on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Blog-search.

And she says: … “My grandmother couldn’t even speak Portuguese,” she recalls, but “my mother and most people of her generation speak very little Wapixana, which means that something got lost there” … and: “Your identity is on your face and in your hair, you can’t deny it,” Ms. Batista said. “I was the only Indian in my class, so of course I felt different. Plus, we had very little money, which meant I didn’t have proper clothes” … and: “From the time I was little, I was always rebellious, always making trouble, and I thought I could contribute more than I would working as a teacher” … (full text, November 13, 2004).

(1000peacewomen): Joênia Batista de Carvalho (1974) is part of the Wapicharas, an indigenous ethnic group. She was born in Roraima, a Brazilian state where indigenous rights still face great resistance to be recognized.

She was the first indigenous in the country to become a lawyer. She works at the Indigenous Council of Roraima and is mainly focused on indigenous territorial rights. She seeks for justice for victims of violations: death threats, persecutions, torture and racial discrimination.

Until she was seven years old, Wapichara Joênia Batista de Carvalho lived in many indigenous villages. “My father used to move a lot because he believed a spirit was following him”. One day, her mother got sick of that and decided to settle down. She moved to Boa Vista, capital of Roraima, and enrolled her kids in school. Joênia learned how to read and to use mathematical operations. She also learned how to defend herself. “People used to bother because I am an indigenous. I would talk back and my mother would tell me to be quiet, but I never lost my pride”.

She got into the Roraima Federal University Law School in 5th place. “Most students – whose parents were judges, district attorneys, politicians – asked what I was doing there”. In a state where indigenous people are extremely discriminated, Joênia has not only graduated, but has also made people hear her. Nowadays, she is a national role model recognized by public powers and indigenous people, who were not used to female leaderships up until then.

She is the only lawyer at the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR), and she provides assistance to 238 communities from all over the state. Her main challenge is to obtain full legal recognition of the indigenous land “Raposa do Sol”, home of 15,000 people.

Currently, it is one of the country’s major conflict areas between indigenous people and invaders – gold miners, ranchers, rice growers. “A lot of indigenous people have been killed there.”

Joênia is 31 years old and faces “constant prejudice, discrimination and death threats”. She does not feel intimidated: she is a mediator between indigenous people and government authorities. She gives countless lectures in Brazil and abroad about her people’s situation. She also participates in courses for indigenous leaderships.

The indigenous area “Raposa do Sol” is located in Northwestern Roraima and has 1.67 million hectares. In 1998, it was legally recognized as the permanent territory of five local indigenous groups, by former Minister of Justice, Renan Calheiros. Since then, they await for the President’s ratification. (1000peacewomen).

links:

Brasil Brasil;

an OHCHR pdf text;

Foundation for Endangered Languages;

Members of the Macuxi and Wapixana indigenous groups;

Rainforest Foundation US;

Forest Peoples Programme FPP;

Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy Program of the University of Arizona;

UNHCR.

Linked with Haircut time for bondholders, and with Eastern Europe is about to Blow.

Mike Whitney is an American writer who runs his own landscape company in Snohomish, Wa, U.S., Mike Whitney regularly features on ukurnet and other websites (on the truth seeker).

Mike is a well respected freelance writer living in Washington state, interested in politics and economics from a libertarian perspective. (on market oracle).

He says: We said many times on this site that George Bush is a baby killer. We said it over and over. Today Mike Whitney has written an article here talking about baby killers. It is George Bush. He is responsible. We only need to do the calculations. Sixty percent of Iraqis are children. To date it is estimated that 300,000 Iraqi civilians have been slaughtered by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Sixty percent of 300,000 comes to 180,000 children murdered by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. That’s a lot of baby killing. So the prime characteristic, the prime attribute of our current US president is that he is a baby killer. This attribute stands out above all others. This is what history will remember about Mr. Bush – that he was first and foremost a goddamn baby-killer! … (on World Prout Assembly, March 18, 2006).

Mike Whitney (asks Bede Vincent Curley): I have been beating the same dead horse for three or four years now and many people are getting tired of the endless iterations of collapsing markets, rising unemployment and growing pessimism. What’s needed is a vision of the future and a concrete plan of action, but I don’t have one. So, tell me, what is to be done? … (full text, March 16, 2009).

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Mike Whitney – USA

… Whitney argued that Eastern Europe “is about to blow”. He pointed out that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not have the resources for a bailout of the size Eastern European economies need to stave off total collapse … Representatives of the World Bank at the G7 meeting in Davos stated that the world economic crisis will push the incomes of an extra 53 million people in the Third World below $2 a day, and that rising food and fuel costs have driven 130-150 million more into poverty, according to BBC News on January 29. The World Bank predicted a “lost decade”, where growth rates the world over would remain static or drop substantially. As the crisis deepens, the battle will increasingly be over whether the corporate elite — who are to blame for the crisis — force the rest of us to pay for it, or whether alternative systems can be built that place human need ahead of private profit. (full long text, 28 February 2009).

Find him and his publications(disambiguate from other persons with the same name):on the truth seeker; on Google Group-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Blog-search.

He writes:

• … It couldn’t be much clearer than that. But don’t expect “compliance” from Geithner or Bernanke. They have no intention of reworking their plans to meet the demands of the G-20. No way. Multilateralism and cooperation might sound great in speeches, but it’s not what drives policy. The TALF (Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility) and the “Public-Private Partnership” are another slap in the face of the international community. They violate the spirit and the letter of the G-20 communique. It will be interesting to see if foreign holders of US Treasurys endure this latest insult in silence or if there’s a sudden stampede for the exits. There’s a sense that the world is getting fed up with the Fed’s financial chicanery and would like to chart a different course. Enough is enough. (full text, March 16, 2009);
• … It was securitization and the 25 to 1 leveraging of toxic assets at the hedge funds, investment banks and private equity firms, that brought on the current financial crisis. When trouble broke out in the subprimes, the secondary market shut down, and the flow of credit from nonbank financial institutions dried up. Unfortunately, the real economy has become addicted to easy credit and sky-high asset prices. Now that the bubble has burst, the phony prosperity of the Bush years has been wiped out in one fell swoop. The stock market has plunged to its 1996 level and housing prices are returning to the mean. The question now should be, do we really want to restore a crisis-prone credit-generating system (securitization) by providing a $1 trillion subsidy to profit-oriented hucksters who are largely responsible for the current recession? As Barak Obama stated last week, “Credit is the economy’s life-blood”. It should distributed through government-owned and regulated financial institutions that operate as public utilities. Credit is everyone’s business. It shouldn’t be controlled by speculators. (full text, March 5, 2009).
• The Obama Team has a big problem on its hands; Timothy Geithner. Geithner was picked as Treasury Secretary because he is a trusted ally of the big banks and has a good grasp of the intricacies of the financial system. The problem is that Geithner can’t handle the public relations part of his job. His big debut in prime-time last Tuesday turned out to be a complete dud. He was thoroughly unconvincing and looked like a nervous teenager at a speech contest. He fizzled on stage for 25 minutes while the little red box in the corner of the TV screen–which shows the current Dow Jones Industrials–plummeted nearly 400 points. It was a total disaster and one that is sure to be repeated over and over as long as Geithner is at Treasury. Not everyone can be a charismatic orator like Obama and nothing short of a personality transplant will fix Geithner. He lacks gravitas and doesn’t inspire confidence. That’s a problem since, the administration’s main objective is to restore public confidence and get people spending again. They’re just shooting themselves in the foot by using him as their pitchman. Eventually, Geithner will either have to be tossed overboard or strapped to Obama like a papoose so he can share in the president’s popularity. Otherwise he will continue to be a millstone. (on after Amageddon, Feb 23, 2009);
• … The banking lobby has already set the agenda.  All the hooplah about “financial rescue” is just a smokescreen to hide the fact that the same scofflaws who ripped off investors for zillions of dollars are back for their next big sting; a quick vacuuming of the public till to save themselves from bankruptcy. It’s a joke. Obama floated into office on a wave of Wall Street campaign contributions and now it’s payback time. Prepare to get fleeced. Geithner is fine-tuning a “public-private” partnership for his buddies so they can keep their fiefdom intact while shifting trillions of dollars of toxic assets onto the people’s balance sheet. They’ve affixed themselves to Treasury like scabs on a leper. Geithner is “their guy”, a Trojan Horse for the banking oligarchs. He’s already admitted that his main goal is to, “keep the banks in private hands”. That says it all, doesn’t it? … (full text, February 18, 2009);
• … Former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev gave a good summary of events in an op-ed in Monday’s Washington Post: “For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live close to each other, found at least some common ground….What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas….Mounting a military assault against innocents was a reckless decision whose tragic consequences, for thousands of people of different nationalities, are now clear. The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of NATO membership, emboldened Georgian leaders into thinking that they could get away with a “blitzkrieg” in South Ossetia…Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against “small, defenseless Georgia” is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity.” (”A Path to Peace in the Caucasus”, Mikhail Gorbachev, Washington Post) … (full text, Aug 13, 2008);
• … The Luck of the Irish: The Irish have plenty to celebrate today. They’ve thrown a spanner in the plans of the bankers and corporate mandarins who want to replace representative government and national sovereignty with their own skewed vision of Capitalist Valhalla; a Euro-Utopia where short-term profits always take priority over the needs of ordinary people. Bravo, Ireland. (full text, June 17, 2008);
• Look around. The evidence of a withering economy is everywhere. In “good times” consumers shun the canned meat aisle altogether, but no more. Today, Spam sales are soaring; grocery stores can’t keep it on the shelves. Everyone is looking for cheaper ways to feed their families. The Labor Dept. assures us that core-inflation is only 4 per cent, but everybody knows it’s load of malarkey. Food prices are going through the roof. White bread is up 13 percent, bacon is up 7 percent and peanut butter is up 9 percent. Inflation is rampant and there’s no end in sight. The dollar is closing in on the peso and working people are struggling just to get by. The bottom line is that more and more people in “the richest country on earth” are now surviving on processed pig-meat. That says it all … (full text, June 2, 2008);
• … Brimming oil tankers are presently sitting off the coasts of Iran and Louisiana. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been filled. Demand is flat. The world’s biggest consumer of energy (guess who?) is cutting back . As CNN reports: “At a time when gas prices are at an all-time high, Americans have curtailed their driving at a historic rate. The Department of Transportation said figures from March show the steepest decrease in driving ever recorded. Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less — that’s 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history” (CNN) … (full text, May 30, 2008;

… The psychology behind the PPT’s activities are explained in greater detail by Robert McHugh Ph.D. who provides a description of how it works in his essay “The Plunge Protection Team Indicator”:
“The PPT decides markets need intervention, a decline needs to be stopped, or the risks associated with political events that could be perceived by markets as highly negative and cause a decline, need to be prevented by a rally already in flight. To get that rally, the PPT’s key component — the Fed — lends money to surrogates who will take that fresh electronically printed cash and buy markets through some large unknown buyer’s account. That buying comes out of the blue at a time when short interest is high. The unexpected rally strikes blood, and fear overcomes those who were betting the market would drop. These shorts need to cover, need to buy the very stocks they had agreed to sell (without owning them) at today’s prices in anticipation they could buy them in the future at much lower prices and pocket the difference. Seeing those stocks rally above their committed selling price, the shorts are forced to buy — and buy they do. Thus, those most pessimistic about the equity market end up buying equities like mad, fueling the rally that the PPT started. Bingo, a huge turnaround rally is well underway, and sidelines money from Hedge Funds, Mutual funds and individuals’ rushes in to join in the buying madness for several days and weeks as the rally gathers a life of its own“. (Robert McHugh Ph.D., “The Plunge Protection Team Indicator”)
The powers of the PPT are greatly exaggerated; eventually the liquidity they provide has to be drained from the system. The popular myth that the Fed simply creates as much money as it chooses and spreads it around wherever it likes; is pure rubbish. The Fed has very defined balance constraints. The system is not quite as rigged as many people imagine. According to Bloomberg News, the Fed has already depleted most of its arsenal:
“The Fed has committed as much as 60 percent of the $709 billion in Treasury securities on its balance sheet to providing liquidity and opened the door to more with yesterday’s decision to become a lender of last resort for the biggest Wall Street dealers.” (“Bernanke May Run Low on Ammunition for Loans, Rates”, Bloomberg) … (full long text, March 20, 2008).

And also:

• Obliterating the Dollar … and the Middle Class? Preparing for the Economic Typhoon, By MIKE WHITNEY, April 25, 2006!!
• Anticipating a Terrorist Attack on Congress, by Mike Whitney, November 27, 2005.

links:

Watch this video: US nationalizes banks, candidates talk economy, some minutes, Oct 16, 2008;

FIRST THOUGHTS: IS THIS WAR?

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Lebanese Queen of Rap Lynn Fattouh, known as Malikah “Queen” aka Lix, is a role model to many female Arabs who fear following in her footsteps due to society’s view of the hip hop industry, especially Arab female hip hop! From the wars in Lebanon to haters in the industry, Malikah has had her fair share of road blocks along the way. Shining all over the Middle East, Malikah has managed not to stumble and fall and has taken her rightful place amongst all the Arab Male rappers and MC’s. Born in Marseille, France in 1986, Malikah is a Lebanese Algerian raised in Beirut. What makes her a unique Arab rapper, singer, and MC, that stands out in the industry, is that she is not only a female but she also raps fluently in Arabic, English, and French … (full long text).

Lynn Fattouh aka MC Lix aka Malikah was born in Marseille *, France in 1986. Half Lebanese, half Algerian and raised in Beirut, Lebanon under the shadow of war, Malikah first hit the Lebanese hip hop scene at the tender age of 16, showing early signs of success, working with EMI Arabia in 2003 after winning a hip hop competition and appearing on the Lebanese television show – Zaven. Malikah raps in Arabic and English and has honed her skills as an RnB and dance vocalist over the last 5 years. She regularly performs in Lebanon and has gone afar afield as America and Canada to spit her rhymes. Malikah has worked with most of Lebanon’s hip hop producer and rapper talent and has actively collaborated with named local talent – Beirut Biloma, Cheb Mami, Hasna and Aks’ser. She is featured on the upcoming debut album release of DJ/Producer Lethal Skillz called ‘New World Disorder,’ and is a member of the 961 Underground family – which includes RGB, and Siska – both members of the old school Lebanese hip hop group Kitaa3 Beirut and MC Moe, aka Gemini 7. Malikah also features prominently in the 961 underground documentary produced by Phonomefodz currently in the final stages of post-production … (full text).

Lynn is one of seven top Arab rappers, hand-picked by MTV Arabiya …

..

Lynn Fattouh / MC Lix / Malikah – Lebanon

Watch these videos (two videos found under the keyword Malikah):

• Malikah in hip hopna, 06.22 min, June 14, 2008;
• Malikah & la Gale live in geneva, 3.50 min, April 21, 2008;
• … and under the key words Lynn Fattouh find her explanation, translated in three languages, 02.13 min, March 8, 2009: in Italian, same in french, same in english.

Nothing in her life fated Lynn Fatouh to a career as a rap singer. Born into a consrvative Muslim family in Beirut *, the 23-year-old is now recording alongside stars like 50 Cent, Eminem and Snoop Dogg. Her first album, attests to her ability to cut through male-dominated cultures – in the Arab world and the world of rap to make a name for herself (on uk.TRUVEO.com).

She says:

• “Lebanon’s MC’s spit the sickest flows,” insists Lynn Fattouh, a.k.a. MC Lix, a.k.a. Malikah (”The Queen”). Long after the party has ended, she is sitting on the dance floor of club Black & White on Monot Street. Lynn is one of seven top Arab rappers, hand-picked by MTV Arabiya, a new cable channel that began broadcasting over the weekend … (full text);
• … “I have a collaboration track on Aks’seir’ album, that was released a couple of years ago where I rap in French and Arabic (Algerian accent)” … and; “Malikah is the rough, serious, hardcore, Arabic woman who raps about politics, religion, and social issues; and MC Lix is my alter-ego, the feminine, sexy lady who is more commercial and talks about love, friendship and so on” … and: “Back then, I had to cover my face because my parents were against me rapping … This is where I had to face my parents. Eventually we spoke and made a deal that they would let me do my music as long as I keep up with school” … and: Malikah seeks to “reunite Arabia, but most of all to unite the world. I’m trying to spread peace and unity. My dream is to live in a united peaceful world” … and: Malikah urges all Arab females to stand up for their rights and freedom “I encourage them to be active in their societies; to work, study, and vote. Moreover, they should respect themselves and their cultures and keep their head up at all times” … (full long text).

Find her as Malikah: on myspaceMusic; on 961underground; on Google Video-search; and as Lynn Fattouh: on Google Blog-search.

… Participating in Hip HopNa gave Malikah the exposure she was looking for. Not only did fans from all over the Arab world contact Malikah to show love, respect, and to ask about the release of her album; “Many producers and MC’s approached me for collaborations. Record companies also offered me record deals. Hip HopNa opened a lot of doors for me and I am thankful for that,” she said.
Malikah has collaborated with talents such as Beirut Biloma, Cheb Mami, Hasna and Aks’ser. She is a regular performer in events held in Lebanon and was hosted on “New TV” channel on May, along with DJ Lethal Skillz and Ragtop. She has also reached the U.S and Canada to spit her rhymes. Malikah is also featured prominently in the 961 underground documentary, produced by Phonomefodz, which will be released in the summer and will be available on DVD in music stores such as Virgin megastore and online … (full text).

La Gale et Llixx aka Malikah Beirut en concert au CSA.

* (two different claims): born in Beirut or in Marseille?

Lynn Fatouh est considérée comme la plus grande chanteuse de rap dans le monde arabe. Issue de la scène hip-hop underground orientale, Lynn Fatouh, alias Malikah rappe et ne mâche pas ses mots en langue arabe. Connue aussi sous le nom de MC Lix (c’est l’Orient, c’est compliqué), Lynn Fatouh décrit ainsi ses “2 surnoms”. “Malikah est la rappeuse dure, sérieuse, sauvage, une femme arabe qui rappe sur les problèmes de la politique, la religion et la société; et MC Lix, c’est mon autre facette, plus féminine, sexy qui fait dans la chanson commerciale et parle d’amour et d’amitié”. Lynn Fatouh fut élue en 2007 parmi les meilleurs MCs du Liban par MTV Orient. Voici une vidéo d’une de ses prestations, pour mieux faire connaissance avec la seule rappeuse du monde arabe, la chanteuse arabe de Beyrouth, Lynn Fatouh alias Malikah mais connue aussi sous l’étiquette MC Lix. (on Mondorama).

… Lynn Fatouh plus connue sous le nom de MC Lix ou encore de Malikah est née en France à Marseille en 1986. Moitié Libanaise, moitié algérienne, elle est élevée dans un Beyrout d’après guerre et connaît dès l’age de 16 ans un certain succès sur la scène hip-hop libanaise. Elle gagne une compétition de hip-hop, est invitée à l’émission de télé Zaven et signe avec EMI Orient en 2003. Malikah rappe aussi bien en arabe qu’en anglais et depuis 5 ans elle fait du RnB. Elle joue régulièrement au Liban et a tourné en Pologne et au Canada. Malikah a travaillé avec la plupart des producteurs de hip-hop et a collaboré avec des rappeurs connus sur la scène de Beyrout comme Biloma, Cheb Mami, Hasna et As’er. Elle joue sur le premier album “New World Disorder” du DJ et producteur Lethal Skillz qui sortira prochainement et elle est membre de ‘961 Underground Family’ qui compte LCI Entertainment signed RGB et Siska – tous deux jouaient dans les groupes de la vieille école du Rap libanais Kikaa 3 Beyrut et MC Moe plus connu sous le nom de Gemini 7 of Mix FM fame. Elle joue aussi dans le documentaire du 961 Underground produit par Phonomefodz qui sort bientôt. En 2006, Malikah rencontre son producteur, The Mighty Thor du Bronx et rejoint la même année à l’équipe de The House of Representatives (T.H.O.R.) qui comprend THE Might Thor, Boulevard, J-Ma et Bravo … (full long 14 pdf pages-text).

links:

Hip-hop’s Arabic-language kin, Lebanese rap artists take genre back to its socially conscious roots in a society deeply divided;

Words from Sara;

Foreign Policy News and Commentary Update, November 21, 2007;

Blogs /World Hip Hop Market on Technorati;

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS AND BLOG REVIEW;

961 Underground: The birth of Lebanese Hip Hop, 2.10 min, 19 September 2006;

Avatarium.

Matthias Chang is a Malaysian of Chinese descent. He is a Barrister of 31 years standing and once served as the Political Secretary to the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. He is the author of three bestsellers, “Future FastForward”, “Brainwashed for War, Programmed to Kill”, and “The Shadow Money-Lenders and the Global Financial Tsunami”, published in the US and in Malaysia. Since his student days in England in the late 1960s, he was and still is, actively involved in the anti-war movement spanning a period of 41 years. He is a Catholic but enjoins all to promote inter-faith understanding. He resides in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia … (full text).

His website: Future Fastforward.

..

Matthias Chang – Malaysia

His Address to American Patriots at the 2006 TBR-AFP Conference in Washington D.C.:
2 short excerpts: … Firstly: We, in Malaysia are no stranger to the goodness of America and your free Constitution. Strange as it may sound, your Constitution has inspired a generation of freedom fighters in the third world following World War II and continues to inspire people throughout the world even as the United States is waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening insane nuclear strikes against Iran and Syria …
… secondly: … I am not ashamed to admit in front of you that when I first saw the brutally deformed babies in the pediatric wards of various hospitals in Iraq – the result of depleted uranium radiation – and the wanton destruction and pain, anguish ripped through my guts and, as tears welled in my eyes, I prayed and prayed for strength to live through that horrifying day. And I vowed on that day that we must campaign to stop the killings. Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, in the Perdana Global Peace Conference in December 2005, called on the world to criminalize war. If murder is a crime during peacetime in our society, killing in time of war is also a crime. If we are civilized, war cannot be an option in the settlement of disputes between nations … (full long text).

Find him and his publications on ;
on Global Research.ca; on his website: GEOPOLITICAL ANALYSIS, FINANCIAL ANALYSIS, MILITARY / INTELLIGENCE; on Google Group-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

He writes:

• … The Blame Game: It would be naïve to assume that the status quo would remain, when the Global Trillion Dollar Casino is for all intents and purposes broken down beyond repair.
  Confirmation that the blame game has started in earnest can be found in the aforesaid remarks of President Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown on March 3, 2009 given after their meeting at the Oval Office and Brown’s speech to Congress on March 4, 2009.
  Let us come back to the issue of the money-lenders. For some strange reason, many people are put off by the term “money-lenders” but are ever so comfortable with bankers.
  But are not bankers, money-lenders?
  In fact I would say that money-lenders are more honourable than your high street bankers, as they can only rob you in the millions. The global bankers, they rape and plunder in the trillions!
  Is it any wonder that Gordon Brown and President Obama, the political representatives of the Power Elites have decided that it is about time that these financial harlots are to be brought under control before they wreck the entire global power structure?
  Let us have no illusions about Obama and Gordon Brown. They are going after these financial harlots not because they want to protect us from these criminals, but because for too long the political faction had to play second fiddle to the financial faction in the overall scheme of global one world government.
  Until lately, money power triumphed over political power. However, when the entire financial system broke into pieces, it was time to settle scores!
  Read for yourself: … (full text, March 7, 2009);
• … When the Dow was 14,000, I advised my friends that it will soon dive below 11,000. Further research showed that even at this level, it could not be sustained and I gave the call to short the Dow as it would plunge below 9,000. These facts can be verified in my books, The Shadow Money-Lenders and Will Barisan Nasional Survive Beyond 2010? published in early 2008 and the articles posted to this website! Not one political / financial analyst in Malaysia dare make such calls. They were completely out of the loop, frolicking in La La land and telling fairy tales that a “new era of prosperity was on the horizon. Good times are here for good”. This was even after the collapse of Bear Stearns in 2007 and Lehman Bros in 2008 … (full text, March 3, 2009);
• … This is the third time that a catastrophic event is invoked to justify a certain course of action.
  Why?
  That it is Warren Buffett who is making this reference is most telling, for he is the hidden economic and financial adviser to President Obama. Warren Buffett has in fact said that Obama is the best man for the job!
  Warren Buffett is not the effable businessman that the mass media make him out to be. He is an insider in every sense of the word.
  I have said repeatedly for over two years that there is an ongoing global currency warfare and what is at stake is the hegemony of the US dollar. Warren Buffet knows that if the dollar ends up officially as toilet paper, his fortune and that of his global partnership – the hidden manipulators would be finished.
  This message that the US is in an economic Pearl Harbor is meant for the enemy, as yet to be disclosed to the American public. It is a warning no less.
  President Obama has echoed the sentiments in the course of his inauguration speech.
  Food for thought: … (full text, January 23, 2009);
• The G7 countries will give their consent and support Cheney’s mad adventure in the Middle East as their only solution to the mess which they have created. I see no other scenario. How I wish I am wrong. But I doubt it. Events following every previous Red ALERTS have come to pass. I am no soothsayer. But applying common sense, we must be realists and prepare our people and our family for the coming wars and prepare to take part in the Global Resistance, in whatever way and means at our disposal … (full text, OCTOBER 20, 2007)
• … I was wrong on account of Dow shooting past the 14,000 points after the Fed reduced both the Discount Rate and the Fund Rate by 25 basis points on 31.10.2007. In fact the Dow rallied to 13,930.01, just 70 points shy of the magical 14,000. So there was a rally but it ran out of steam sooner than I thought. I surmised that Wall Street and the Plunge Protection Team would keep the momentum going for at least a week. They were pumping additional billions into the system. But it did not work. They ran out of gas! The next day, 1.11.2007, the Dow plunged 362.14 points, bringing the Dow back to reality at 13,567.87. We should in fact be happy that people have not bought into this con game perpetrated by the Fed and Wall Street, tried as hard as they could. This is a most significant event as we enter the final 4th quarter of 2007. The first quarter of 2008 will be a nightmare! … (full text);
• … Middle East lost the best chance for peace when the world turned their backs on the Palestinians when Hamas was elected as the new government. It was the will of the Palestinians, regardless of our personal views of Hamas. Had the US and Israel engaged the new government, peace would have prevailed. But now this is gone forever … (full text).

… Chang demanded that Lee, former Singapore premier Goh Chok Tong and both foreign ministers explain the document. He said: “I’ll show to you the craftiness and the insidious method of presenting evidence by Lee and the Singapore government. (But) we will take the bull by its horns. We will use their same document to expose their lies to show their selectiveness in what to agree and what not to. It is the height of arrogance to do what they did to Malaysia, and it is the height of incompetence on our part to let them unilaterally revoke the agreement and then say it is the right decision, and that we’re protecting our sovereignty” … // … Chang accused Singapore of taking advantage (of a dozy Malaysian government). He said: “The bridge was never an issue. Singapore’s flip-flop over the bilateral agreement is merely to drag the other outstanding issues into the negotiation. I want to know why the [Malaysian] government had agreed to incorporate airspace and sand into the negotiation and thus get entrapped in a limited package approach?”
(full text, April 27, 2006).

COURT OF APPEAL, MALAYSIA: Matthias Chang – vs – The District Grand Lodge of the Eastern Archipelago, 23 DECEMBER 2004.

links:

Future Fastforward;

Media Rakyat, Information for the people;

Proposed Economic Stimulus, 17 February 2009.

Esthi Hudiono, from Surabaya, East Java, is a relentless campaigner on the issue of HIV/Aids. With her NGO, the Yayasan Hotline Surabaya, she has worked to raise public awareness of HIV/Aids issues, providing counseling for those infected, and campaigning for 15 years for comprehensive strategies for its prevention and cure. In 2004, she succeeded in lobbying the local government to endorse the law on HIV/Aids prevention and cure. East Java is Indonesia’s first province to have such a law … She works with the Yayasan Hotline Surabaya, a non-governmental organization, which she chairs. For the past 15 years, Esthi has been working to promote public awareness of HIV/AIDS issues. Yayasan Hotline establishes health clinics in brothel areas, reaching out to sex workers, empowering them and marginalized women with information, befriending the HIV/AIDS-positive patients and lobbying for direct involvement of government bodies, hospitals and schools in the campaign effort.
Esthi is a trained education counselor. Her passion is to contribute her knowledge to society. “As a counselor, I am trained to help individuals to solve their problems, to encourage them to make changes so they could live better. That is exactly what I like doing,” she says. However, Esthi learned through her previous work that her problem solving techniques were very often impractical because her clients’ problems were rooted not only within themselves but also in the system and the environment in which they live. “I could only console them, not solve their problems. It’s impossible to encourage them to adapt to the system when the system itself is flawed” … (1000peacewmen 1/2).

She says: … “There is a moral bias both in the community and among policy makers. They think people with HIV/Aids simply deserve the disease as a punishment for having disobeyed religious norms”. (1000peacewmen).

..

Esthi Susanti Hudiono – Indonesia

She works for the Yayasan Hotline Surabaya.

Indonesia, challenges of synergising HIV/AIDS & Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. (SPOTLIGHT): An article from Arrows For Change, by Esthi Susanti Hudiono:

• on amazon, May 1, 2006;
• on article archives.com, May 1, 2006.

Adalah Esthi Susanti Hudiono. Membaca catatan kisah hidupnya dalam 15 tahun terakhir, seolah membuka catatan sejarah tentang perkembangan virus HIV/AIDS di Indonesia. Direktur Eksekutif Yayasan Hotline Surabaya ini merupakan generasi pertama aktivis HIV/AIDS di Indonesia. Ia bekerja dengan semangat yang terus membara, di tengah ancaman, kritikan, dan juga kehilangan sebagian materinya, demi menegakkan rasa kemanusiaan … (full text).

She says also: … “I thought this would be an easy job: just promote condoms, promote condoms face-to-face. Easy! Because people will be told about the risks, about sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and the others. It turns out we still haven’t succeeded” … (full text).

1000peacewmen 2/2: … When Esthi started to work on HIV/AIDS issues, she decided to focus on sex workers. “Though I personally do not agree with prostitution, it is not easy to just tell prostituted women to stop hooking, because they have families to support. Moreover, trying to quit means they have to face threats and physical abuse from their management,” she said. She thought that she could use her counseling skills to encourage sex workers to make changes in their sexual behaviors, such as using condoms and being aware of their reproductive health. She hoped that by altering their unsafe practices, sex workers would not be infected with HIV/AIDS or transmits the disease to others.

Esthi found that her efforts to promote HIV/AIDS prevention and cure were, again, hampered by problems hinged on a structural issue, the system. She came across HIV/AIDS issues by chance 15 years ago when Yayasan Hotline was invited to take part in a CDC/USAid research on HIV/AIDS in Surabaya. Surabaya is East Java’s capital city. It is notorious for its sex industry, which employs sex workers from the locality and other provinces. Surabaya’s position as a busy transportation hub and a favored destination of economic migrants has spurred the growth of the sex industry. No less than 20,000 prostitutes work in Surabaya’s five biggest authorized brothel compounds alone.

It was not the soaring prevalence of HIV/AIDS that provoked Esthi’s interest in the issue, but the lack of policies and actions that directly involved those who were at risk or were already infected with HIV/AIDS. Esthi and Yayasan Hotline use various methods, such as the outreach program, peer educator and community organizing, in their efforts to promote awareness of HIV/AIDS among sex workers in Surabaya. Early on, Esthi realized that focusing on the prostitutes’ sexual practices alone would neither slow down the HIV/AIDS transmission nor help the prostitutes themselves.

The popular condom-usage campaign, for example, might have taught sex workers the importance of using condoms to reduce the risk of getting infected with HIV/AIDS. However, in reality, sex workers continue to engage in unsafe sex because their clients refuse to use condoms. Sex workers, especially those working in brothels, do not dare to upset clients in order to avoid punishment from their bosses or protectors. But quitting the profession to avoid HIV/AIDS is an unfeasible option because sex workers are mostly poor or heavily indebted to their ‘management’.

Esthi then decided to change her strategy. She chose to work more directly with the sex workers and poor women prone to trafficking by offering them counseling, advocacy and empowerment programs. “There is an absolute need to pay more attention to the marginalized women and girls, especially those who live in poor villages,” she says. “They are very vulnerable and are easy targets of victimization. We should teach and empower them so that they are not easily lured into the sex industry through trafficking practices.”

In 1992, as part of her direct intervention efforts, Esthi pioneered an outreach service and a peer education program for sex workers in Surabaya. In 1994, she helped found a self-help organization for sex workers called the Kelompok Kerja Berdaya, or the Empowerment Working Group. Also in 1994, Esthi was involved in introducing the use of theatre play as a method of psychosocial therapy for the sex workers. Performed by the sex workers, the plays are usually staged at an annual sex worker conference held in Surabaya. The themes of the plays are chosen to reflect the problems encountered by sex workers, such as violence toward prostitutes, trafficking and harassment.

In 2000, Esthi founded the Yayasan Surabaya, which runs a drop-in clinic behind a prostitution compound. The clinic provides general health treatment, counseling and reproductive health services for sex workers. The next year, she help found a women’s NGO called the Forum Kesehatan Perempuan Kecamatan Krembangan, or the Krembangan Sub-district Women Health Forum. Krembangan is one of Surabaya’s five busiest red light districts.

In addition to sex workers and marginalized women, Esthi also works closely with people who are HIV/AIDS-positive by providing them with counseling and companionship. Although medical treatment for HIV/AIDS has recently become more available, only a few patients seek medication. Most of them prefer to hide their condition to avoid public embarrassment. “There is a moral bias both in the community and amongst policy makers. They think people with HIV/AIDS simply deserve the disease as punishment for having disobeyed religious norms,” Esthi explains.

Flawed media coverage that portrays HIV/AIDS as “some dangerous, severely contagious, hard to cure, nothing but embarrassing diseases” only bolsters public prejudice. Such a biased point of view has further hampered efforts to prevent and cure HIV/AIDS, she adds. Meanwhile, the government either fails to see, or chooses to ignore, the right of the HIV/AIDS-positive persons to receive medication.

Her disappointment in the lack of firm action by the government has led Esthi to persistently call for a change in the way the government perceives and handles HIV/AIDS issues. She argued that HIV/AIDS should not only be treated as a health issue, but also as a political issue. For that reason, Esthi led a lobby to set up legal instruments that support HIV/AIDS prevention and cure efforts.

The endorsement by the local government of Surabaya of the 2004 provincial law on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Cure, which is the first of its kind in the country, was the fruit of Esthi’s persistent lobbying with the provincial government and the legislative body. The law requires, among other things, people whose sexual behavior is at risk to wear condoms and use harm reduction injection. It likewise requires school programs which provide life skills education for students.

In 2004, Esthi was given the Surabaya Academy Award for health. The jurors said Esthi was chosen because she had demonstrated her dedication through her years of relentless work on the HIV/AIDS issues. She was praised for her advocacy and her efforts at providing free counseling to people with HIV/AIDS. She was especially applauded for her distinctive approach in treating HIV/AIDS not merely as a health issue but as a political issue. (1000peacewmen).

… She and the outreach worker review the basic facts about how HIV is transmitted. The girl knows she should always have her clients use a condom, but admits she cannot convince them. Even her current boyfriend will not wear a condom. This inability to dictate the terms of sex is a daily reality for prostitutes in Indonesia, says Esthi Susanti Hudiono, head of Hotline Surabaya – the organization that runs this office. “Sex workers do not have bargaining power. That belongs to the customers,” said Eshti. “It has proven almost impossible to give sex workers bargaining power in terms of condoms.” (full text).

Links:

The book: The Life Saver;

Suara Karya: Penderita HIV Sudah Mencapai 270 Ribu Orang, 2008 Oktober 17;

HIV / AIDS: Teror Surabaya Setelah Warga Wiyung, Pasien Gubeng Meninggal, March 07;

Yayasan Hotline Service Surya, Surabaya, Indonesia, Etika, Hak Asasi, Dan Pewabahan AIDS;

Kommunitas AIDS, Indonesia: Pentas Teater Surya Community;

UNaids – Street sex workers and STD/HIV/AIDS services in Surabaya, Indonesia;

g-help – Gender, Health and Environmental Likages Program;

Perempuan Perdamaian;

Global Challenges – Survey Looks At Global Perceptions of Health Problems, Priorities, Foreign Aid, 14/Dec/2007;

Mencari Jalan Kebahagiaan yang Berbeda.

Linked with Global recovery rests on a fresh US approach to China, and with The New Depression.

Martin Jacques was editor of Marxism Today until its closure in 1991. He is co-founder of the think-tank Demos.  He has been a columnist for The Times and The Sunday Times and was deputy editor of The Independent. He is the co-editor and co-author of ‘The Forward March of Labour Halted?’ (1981), ‘The Politics of Thatcherism’ (1983) and ‘New Times’ (1989). Currently he is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. During the last year he has been a visiting professor at the International Centre for Chinese Studies at Aichi University in Japan, a visiting professor at Renmin University in Beijing and a senior visiting fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He is writing a book about Asian modernity and the rise of China. He is a columnist for The Guardian and The New Statesman … (full text).

… (He) assert that Prime Minister Tony Blair is presently “the only show in town”, because “there is no serious, ideologically based opposition to Blair within the party” … (full text, 15 December 2004).

Imperial overreach is accelerating the global decline of America: The disastrous foreign policies of the US have left it more isolated than ever, and China is standing by to take over, by Martin Jacques, March 28, 2006.

..

Martin Jacques – England

Find him and his publications on alibris; on New Statesman; on The Guardian; on amazon; on Demos /latest publications; on ukwatch.net; (Google searches may ask our attention for disambiguation): on Google News-search; on Google Group-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

He writes:

• … Was the defeat inevitable? This, of course, was not the only defeat that the trade union movement suffered during the Thatcher period, but it was by far the most serious. If the miners had enjoyed unity, then not only would the strike have been more effective, but they would also have enjoyed much broader public support. This would have made it harder for the Thatcher government to be so ruthless and uncompromising in its conduct of the strike.  They would have been obliged to find ways of convincing the middle ground … (full text, 6 March 2009);
• … This report identifies a new breed of scientist inhabiting the world’s science and innovation networks, and argues that the UK should embrace them … (full text, March 4, 2009 – and: download of the 100 pages-pdf text);
• … The financial crisis that is now wreaking havoc all over the western world, however, tells a very different story. The Thatcherite world is unravelling before our eyes. Its beloved City has been damned in the minds of most, as the shock troops of the neoliberal revolution, the bankers, have become the object of enormous popular anger. The market, the white knight of Thatcherism, has failed in the most spectacular way imaginable. The state is universally seen as indispensable to any solution. In the United States, which for Thatcher was always the compelling model, the new president appears to be on the verge of nationalising the banks; it cannot be long before the same thing happens here. Nationalisation, the state as saviour, the failure of the market, the demise of the City, the rise of protectionism, the decline of the US: on the 30th anniversary of Thatcher’s rise to power, we are witnessing nothing less than the implosion of the Thatcherite project. Its system and credo have landed the country in its greatest economic crisis for 60 years, perhaps much longer. That she led a party wedded to the status quo, to the preservation of Britain as it was, made her Bolshevism even more unlikely. But just as it took a long time for people to understand the significance and meaning of her rise in the 1970s and early 1980s, so now it is as if the country is in a state of shock, unable even vaguely to comprehend the ramifications of what is happening … (full text, 26 February 2009);
• … In all these senses the financial meltdown has far more in common with the Great Depression than the Great Inflation. When the financial crisis consumed Wall Street in 1929 and proceeded to undermine the real economy, engulfing Europe in the process, it was not accompanied by a radical shift towards Keynesianism, but rather a reassertion of sound finance orthodoxy, followed in due course by the adoption of protectionism. The political mainstream as represented by Labour’s Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden and the Conservative Stanley Baldwin all sang from the same hymn sheet. Only Keynes and a faction of the Liberal Party enunciated a plausible alternative. Eventually a programme of fiscal deficits and public works was pursued by Franklin D Roosevelt in the United States, but in Britain Keynesianism was not properly embraced until rearmament and the approach of war. Indeed, it was not until 1945 that the combined legacy of war and the Depression belatedly resulted in a fundamental political realignment and the birth of the social democratic era. (full text, Feb 18, 2009);
• A round-up of some of the highlights from this week’s New Statesman plus some of the things we’re up to online. We launch our brand new columnist Martin Jacques – the former editor of that legendary publication Marxism Today. Don’t miss his fascinating essay on the financial collapse – and you can learn more about him online through our Q&A. (on NewStatesman, 13 February 2009);
• … The left is very fragmented and does not have a strong sense of itself anymore. It’s much more polycentric than it used to be. I suppose that has advantages but there are also a lot of disadvantages. This is a situation in which an inchoate shift to the left is taking place – popular opinion has turned on the citadels of neo-liberalism, chiefly the banks. There’s a turn against the gross inequalities and gross privilege that have characterised the neo-liberal era. Furthermore, there’s an almost universal belief that there’s only one body that can sort this out and that’s the government. That’s a fundamental shift because for over thirty years people have believed the opposite: that government is ineffectual, even obsolescent, while the market and private enterprise are dynamic and operate in the public interest. They don’t think that now. The striking thing, however, is that the left has had precious little to do with this shift – it’s not like the 1970s when the old system ran out of steam and was undermined by the rise of Thatcherism. The whole thing has imploded but not thanks to the left … (full text, 13 February 2009);
• A Constitution for Social Care sets out a fair settlement between social care users and society. Social care is an essential public service. It provides day to day support for disabled people, those with impairments, and older people who need help maintaining their independence and living full and active lives. At the moment, it helps support over 1.5 million people, and it is a fundamental element of our welfare system … (full text on the webpage, Feb 4, 2009 – and: download of the 13 pages-pdf text);
• … The timidity of this government, its inability to face up to the size of the crisis and its refusal to take on those who are responsible for it is revealed, above all else, in its failure to nationalise the high street banks. The government will pay dearly for this. Sooner or later, one suspects this will be inevitable and the government will look weak because it has resisted it for so long. The fact that it has given such huge quantities of public money to the banks without any effective controls or transparency – that it has socialised the risks while allowing those responsible for the calamity to dispense public money as they see fit, running the banks according to their own and their shareholders’ interests – leaves it condemned as having subsidised the very people who caused the disaster in the first place. New Labour was always spineless in the face of powerful vested interests; and even when the neoliberal system has come tumbling down, it remains as weak-kneed as ever … (full text, 29 January 2009);
• … The central player in this new world will be China. Continental in size and mentality, China is a ‘civilisation-state’ whose characteristics, attitudes and values long predate its existence as a nation-state. Although clearly influenced by the west, its extraordinary size and history mean that it will remain highly distinct, and as it exercises its rapidly growing power it will change much more than the world’s geo-politics. The nation-state as we understand it will no longer be globally dominant, and the Westphalian state-system will be transformed; ideas of race will be redrawn. This profound and far-sighted book explains for the first time the deeper meaning of the rise of China … (full text).
• We are but halfway through 2008 yet it has already born witness to a sizeable shift in global power. The default western mindset remains that the western writ rules. That is hardly surprising; it has been true for so long there has been little reason for anyone to question it, least of all the west. The assumption is that might and right are invariably on its side, that it always knows best and that if necessary it will enforce its political wisdom and moral rectitude on others. There is, however, a hitch: the authority of the self-appointed global sheriff is remorselessly eroding … (full text, 30 July 2008);
• … The political terrain is shifting. Attitudes towards the US are a case in point. The move towards neoliberalism in Britain was intimately bound up with the embrace of the US as the country to be aped and copied. The American model was celebrated by Thatcherites and New Labour alike, California worshipped as the model of the future, “Anglo-Saxon” embalmed as the fitting metaphor for the shared Anglo-American legacy, Europe denigrated and the rest of the world ignored. How perceptions of the US have changed: a country living beyond its means, dependent on large helpings of Asian credit, characterised by huge inequalities, its great financial institutions guilty of huge folly, forced to rely for their salvation on the sovereign wealth funds of China and elsewhere. And, remember, we are only at the very beginning of the biggest geopolitical shift since the dawn of the industrial era … (full text, 18 February 2008).

links:

Recent media coverage of 1984 miners strike, March 9, 2009;

If at first you do not succeed, try again (and again), March 12, 2009;

Taliban operate freely from Quetta: US, Marh 12, 2009;

Categories on wikipedia: Human name disambiguation pages; Newspaper people by newspaper in the United Kingdom; Guardian journalists.

… A former Professor of English at Warwick, Greer became a household name when she published The Female Eunuch, attracting praise and opprobrium in more or less equal measure. She has since highlighted injustice against women in Asia and Africa, and managed an area of rainforest in her native Australia. On a raft of contentious issues, she takes a refreshingly practical view where others mire themselves in political correctness. In her speeches and theatre shows Germaine fields questions on almost any subject, serious or light, from biodiversity to Shakespeare’s women to sex for the over 60s. Audiences find the encounter candid, provocative and seriously amusing. (full text).

… Other works include The Madwoman’s Underclothes (1986), Slip-shod Sibyls (1995), The Whole Woman (1999) and The Boy (2003) Her latest book Shakespeare’s Wife was published in 2007 by Bloomsbury. (full text).

..

Germaine Greer – USA

Watch these videos:

• Germaine Greer on The Monthly, 32.23 min, Sept 2008;
• Germaine Greer interview – This Is Dom Joly – BBC comedy, 2.52 min, August 01, 2007;
• Estelle Morris Meets – Germaine Greer, 30 min, not dated;
• DAME EDNA – Zsa Zsa Gabor – Nana Mouskouri – Germaine Greer, 06.53 min, Aug 30, 2007;
• Her performance: Darling, Do You Love Me? (made 1968), 3.30 min, added December 12, 2007.

A project to build a network of seven roof-top nature reserves across the capital is to be launched by writer and broadcaster Germaine Greer today. The three-year project is funded through SITA Trust’s Enriching Nature Programme and will install living roofs on buildings including the Transport for London headquarters in St James Park, Ford Motor Company at Dagenham, the University of East London (Stratford) and Lewisham Town Hall … (full text, 4 March 2009).

… Meawhile controversial Australian author Germaine Greer has echoed claims that failure to backburn contributed to the huge death toll – claiming: “It’s useless running around looking for arsonists. The arsonists are us. They are our government and our administrators. We have been stupid”. Speaking from London, Greer said Australians were paying the price for repeatedly ignoring the lessons of past bushfires – the need for burn-offs in cooler months to lessen the risk of blazes in the summer. “I was born in 1939 and Melbourne was under black clouds of smoke with cinders sifting down everywhere and we were already there on Black Friday,” she said. “We get taught the same lesson again and again and we just think: ‘Oh no, that’s a bit drastic’. No, it’s not a bit drastic, we have to do it. “It’s the same old story. We need to educate people, we need to also have a bit of courage and we probably need somebody to direct the operation.” Is she right or off the mark? Read more of Germaine Greer’s bushfire argument here … (full text, February 13, 2009 ).

She says:

• … Professor Germaine Greer, president of Buglife, which helped organise the project, said: “Living roofs are one way we can all do something to help so many of the creatures we love that are disappearing because of loss of habitat.” It is hoped the spaces could replace those lost to patio gardens and other developments … (full text, March 4, 2009).
• Germaine Greer has joined the  call for reform of Australia’s fire management systems, arguing that it is “useless looking for arsonists” as the blame for Victoria’s bushfires lies with “governments and administrators”. In an impassioned statement in London overnight, Professor Greer said that Australians have repeatedly ignored the lessons of nature and that while fires cannot be prevented, “we have to learn to use fire”. Speaking with journalists at a function hosted by Prince Charles to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the UK friends of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, Professor Greer said the notion of great swathes of rural Victoria – including Marysville where she spent childhood holidays – being transformed into an enormous sepulchre was “just too terrible” to contemplate … (full long text, February 13, 2009)
• … “Greer said Australians were paying the price for repeatedly ignoring the lessons of past bushfires — the need for burn-offs in cooler months to lessen the risk of blazes in the summer. “I was born in 1939 and Melbourne was under black clouds of smoke with cinders sifting down everywhere and we were already there on Black Friday,” she said in London on Thursday. “We get taught the same lesson again and again and we just think: ‘Oh no, that’s a bit drastic.’ No, it’s not a bit drastic, we have to do it. “It’s the same old story. We need to educate people, we need to also have a bit of courage and we probably need somebody to direct the operation. “It’s useless running around looking for arsonists. The arsonists are us. They are our Government and our administrators. We have been stupid” … (full text, February 14, 2009)”.

Find her and her publications on IMDb; on wikipedia: /works, /further reading; her bio on biogs.com; on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search; on Google Image-results.

… Tonight, Heston also tries to convince his celebrity guests that “meat disguised as fruit is a wonderful idea”, especially if that fruit is a plum made from bulls’ plums, and that lampreys – a bloodsucking eel – are an amusingly violent starter. While Germaine Greer plays the “I’m an unshockable Australian feminist who’s been on I’m A Celebrity… I’ll eat anything” card, Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood reacts to lamprey blood sauce in the way you’d expect of a man in a sequinned tie … . (full text, March 10, 2009);

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for another act. Now, it is a girl, so be nice because she could be a bit … well, crap. No, it’s not a comedy routine, but a true introduction I’ve been given on stage before my act. It’s an attitude female standups have come to expect from insecure, chauvinistic hacks with little talent. But from Germaine Greer? Whatever happened to sisterhood? The answer to the question “Are women funny?” has never been in doubt. Of course we are – and not even in particularly different ways to men. Plenty of brilliantly witty women have shown that, given a mic and a stage, we can more than give men a run for their funny … (full text, 5 March 2009).

… This image of a militant feminist doesn’t sit comfortably with me because I am none of those things; in fact most of the women I know who describe themselves as feminist are nothing of the sort. The second wave feminism of the 60s and 70s gave us the hugely influential manifestos of Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan. It made men realise that there was more to equality than the vote. It distilled the cry of the thousands of women living in servitude as housewives and quietly whispering to themselves at night “Is this it?” But, equally, it has distorted the world’s view of feminists, and made many women reluctant to associate with the ideology. Although now I’ll quite happily discuss my opinions on patriarchy to strangers, not long ago I would accompany my introduction as a feminist with an apologetic shrug and an “I know what you’re thinking, but … ” … (full text, March 6, 2009).

She writes:

• … For 40 or maybe 60 millennia, Aboriginal peoples managed fire proactively, setting alight woodland, scrubland and grassland, so that they could pass freely, so that game was driven towards them, so that fresh green herbage was available. Aboriginal languages have dozens of words for fire. As the Endeavour sailed up the eastern coast, Captain Cook noted that the skies were darkened with smoke by day and lit up by fire at night. In the national parks of Australia, the importance of regular burning is well understood. Elsewhere the emphasis has been on prevention. Attempting to prevent fire in most of Australia is simply postponing the inevitable … (full text, February 9, 2009);
• TOMORROW, MADONNA will be 50. She is no longer the fast-talking, streetwise midget who used to terrorise talk show hosts in the Eighties with her sizzling one-liners. Back then you never knew what colour her hair would be or whetherher eyebrows would be bushy or pencil thin or whether she’d dare you to sniff her underpants … (full text, 15 Aug 2008);
• When Miley Cyrus was asked about the picture of herself clutching a satin sheet to her chest that Annie Leibovitz has taken for the current issue of Vanity Fair, she said it looked “pretty and natural” and that she thought it was “really artsy”. If by this she meant artistic, rather than artsy-fartsy, she was right on the money. In western art most of the women portrayed semi-clad or totally nude are children. Their nipples are pallid and undeveloped, their breasts hard and veinless, their pubes unfurred. When Lucian Freud paints girl children, nobody cares; when Leibovitz photographs them, everyone goes ballistic. When Botticelli paints the yet-to-be-enjoyed goddess of love emerging from the sea, people come from all over the world to gape at her. The Greeks and Romans liked their goddesses meaty; our preferred Venuses are children. Hardy perennials such as Diane de Poitiers held their sway as long as they did because their bodies never matured … (full text, 30 April 2008).

She says also: … “superior bullying tactics, like making housemates cold and hungry, could encourage playground bullying” … and: “I thought it was actually demonstrating the role of taunting in the playground and there are so many children whose lives have actually been destroyed by taunting in the playground,” … She also said that her fellow housemates had publicity-seeking agendas. “I had no idea who would be in here and it’s wrong for me to present myself in the same context as they are”  … and: “I’m leaving over specific issues, but best for everyone if I don’t discuss them. I have a problem with decisions, I make them fast and when I make them, I stick to them” … (full text, 12 January, 2005).

She writes also: The world mourns. World-famous wildlife warrior Steve Irwin has died a hero, doing the thing he loved, filming a sequence for a new TV series … // … Irwin was the real Crocodile Dundee, a great Australian, an ambassador for wildlife, a global phenomenon, a superhuman generator of merchandise, books, interactive video-games and action figures. The only creatures he couldn’t dominate were parrots … (full text, 5 September 2006).

links:

IMDb (Internet Movie Database);

Catalyst, world class speakers;

Categories on wikipedia:

• Anarcha-feminists;
• Anarchist academics;
• Anarchist communists;
• Australian academics;
• Australian anarchists;
• Australian atheists;
• Australian expatriates in the United Kingdom;
• Australian feminists;
• Australian women writers;
• Big Brother UK contestants;
• Feminist studies scholars;
• Living anarchists;
• 20th-century women writers.

Further on wikipedia: his career, his obituaries.

… John Updike was a legend among poets, writers and literary critics. Updike won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work on the Rabbit series. And he regularly wrote for the New York Times and the New York Times book review. He was a thoughtful, enlightening and creative mastermind. Let’s remember his March 18th birth with these inspiring 12 John Updike quotes: … (full text, March 9, 2009).

A JOHN UPDIKE WEBSITE FOR INFORMATION AND DISCUSSION.

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John Hoyer Updike – USA (1932 – 2009)

American author John Updike, a leading writer of his generation who chronicled the emotional drama of American small-town life with searing wit and vivid prose, has died of lung cancer. He was 76. “It is with great sadness that I report that John Updike died this morning,” said Nicholas Latimer of Alfred A Knopf, a unit of Random House. “He was one of our greatest writers, and he will be sorely missed.” Updike died in a hospice in Massachusetts, the state where he lived for many years … (full text, ).

Watch these videos:

• PCN Profiles – John Updike, 58.57 min, May 25, 2007;
• Charlie Rose – UPDIKE/LAGRAVENESE/GARBUS, 57.53 min, Nov 6, 1998;
• Book TV After Words: John Updike, an earlier interview about his life and work, 1.29.53 h, added Jan 29, 2009.

… While John Updike was working at becoming an American literary giant, he took time out to write a historical pageant of the place he called home in 1968, Ipswich. “Three Texts From Early Ipswich: A Pageant” was first performed Aug. 3, 1968, at the South Parish Church. It was part of an annual celebration called 17th Century Day, which residents had for many years observed by parading dressed in period costumes.
The church burned down, and 17th Century Day is now Olde Ipswich Days, a decidedly more commercial celebration than its predecessor. 375th Committee Chairman Nat Pulsifer said the pageant has been staged periodically over the years. He wrote Updike last fall for permission to put it on once again … (full text, March 07, 2009).

… I’ve never connected John Updike and Paul Harvey before, but will do so now. Both came approximately from the same era, and Updike’s perfectly pitched prose reached a New Yorker audience as deftly as Paul Harvey’s genial stories attracted those who had never heard of the New Yorker, and wouldn’t have read it if they had … (full text, March 4, 2009).

John Updike in pictures: on The Guardian; on New York Social Diary; on John Updike, 1966; on John Updike in Cincinnati 2001; on Google Images-search.

In his autobiography Self-Consciousness, a “big-bellied Lutheran God” within the young John Updike looked on in contempt as he struggled to give up cigarettes. Many years later the older Updike, now giving up on alcohol, coffee, and salt, put into the mouth of that God the words of Frederick the Great excoriating his battle-shy soldiers—”Dogs, would you live forever?” But all the life-enhancing substances were set aside, and writing became Updike’s “sole remaining vice. It is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality.” In the mornings, he could write “breezily” of what he could not “contemplate in the dark without turning in panic to God” … (full text, March 12, 2009).

… After many years of admiration for John Updike’s abundant creativity, I took the bold step and wrote him a note expressing my pleasure with his memoir, Self-Consciousness. To my astonishment, he promptly replied, using a dirty-keyed old fashioned typewriter: “I am happy you found so much to recognize in Self-Consciousness; our generation, which tended to slip between wars and cultural upheavals, still has a story to tell and a song to sing.” He then told me about his high school and how his town had changed … (full text, March 10, 2009).

Reading is required for any John Updike pilgrimage. That’s not “reading,” as in books, but Reading, as in Pennsylvania. It seems you can’t go a block in this city of about 83,000 without running into one of the author’s old stomping grounds or a scene from one of his books, where often the city is named Alton or Brewer … (full text, February 22, 2009).

Find him and his publications on ;
on Pegasos; on ;
on wikipedia/bibliography; on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search, and all Google News-results.

… I found this poem with the image and notes at the CRS Archives – hosted by the CRS Center for Leadership and Management in the Design and Construction Industry … of all places to find an Updike poem! The first four lines of this poem also appear in the central story of a short story triptych, “The Blessed Man of Boston, My Grandmother’s Thimble, and Fanning Island,” written in the spring of 1961, or so I have from pages 75-76 of William H. Pritchard’s Updike biography, Updike: America’s Man of Letters (2005). Wes Davis, however, informs us that the full poem was written in 1954. I’m curious where CRS obtained it, for the CRS Archives provide the late date 1969, and seem to imply that the image comes from Updike’s own hand … (full text, February 28, 2009).

… Before Rabbit, Run, I’d never managed to get through a whole John Updike novel. I tried The Witches Of Eastwick, but I gave up after 50 pages; the prose was too meandering, and the characters too flatly hateful to hold my interest. The only real notion I had of Updike was that I always got him confused with John Steinbeck, enough so that when Updike passed away a couple of months ago, I was briefly amazed that the author of Grapes Of Wrath had lived to see our remake of the Great Depression. After I came to my senses, I had that impression I always get when an unfamiliar writer dies—that of a deadline missed, or an assignment dropped … (full text, March 6, 2009).

… “Updike’s hallmark was his glittering, gloriously vivid style,” writes Lev Grossman for Time. “His talent for spotting detail, for capturing the slightest shift in light or in a character’s mood in prose was unmatched. It was not the most fashionable of gifts – while his contemporaries practiced the rock-ribbed realism of Hemingway and Carver, or the high-concept contraptions of the Metafictionists, Updike conducted his pursuit of eloquence and wit almost alone” … (full text, Jan 27, 2009).

John Updike was one of the very first authors to really inspire me to write with his story “A&P” and while his passing wasn’t a surprise (he was 75 and had lung cancer), it most certainly was saddening. The Boston Globe has an excellent “life in pictures” slideshow featuring Updike that is definitely worth checking out; click here to be transported. The man was prolific and one of the very few literary fiction authors to support himself solely with his writing. (on bookish, March 4, 2009).

… But Rabbit Angstrom drove a Toyota and read Consumer Reports, like many of the adults I knew. (My parents were Ford and Time people.) He worried about the state of the world, but from the perspective of a guy having a beer after mowing the lawn. Some of Rabbit’s worries were Updike’s attempts to capture the zeitgeist. Others were prescient. Rabbit says early in the novel, “I figure oil’s going to run out about the same time I do, the year two thousand. Seems funny to say it, but I’m glad I lived when I did. These kids coming up, they’ll be living on table scraps. We had the meal”. As I made my way through Updike’s novels and short stories, I encountered again and again places as drab and commonplace as those I inhabited, yet rendered with a voice both lyrical and knowing. Updike created worlds that were perfectly ordinary and charged with meaning, and, in fleeting moments, with beauty. His was an exquisite sensibility at home in the mundane, a position that struck me, in my early adulthood, with existential force … (full text, January 28, 2009).

links:

BOOK GROUPIE: Authors share their favorites, March 6, 2009;

The Quest to Put the World’s Information Online, March 07, 2009;

Ipswich to Honor John Updike on March 8, Feb 19, 2009;

Posthumous Literature, March 10, 2009.

An extreme traveler, Pepe’s nose for news has taken him toall parts of the  globe. He was in Afghanistan and interviewed the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a couple of weeks before his assassination (Masoud: From warrior to statesman, Sep 11, 2001). Two weeks before September 11, 2001, while Pepe was in the tribal areas of Pakistan, ATol published his prophetic piece, Get Osama! Now! Or else … (Aug 30, 2001). Pepe was one of the first journalists to reach Kabul after the Taliban’s retreat, and more recently he has explored and reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China … Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). (on Asia Times Online).

He says: … The Petraeus-Gates strategy now under Obama is to shower US dollar bills on any Taliban commander that wants to make a deal with NATO. Zardari’s doing the same thing Petraeus-Gates want to do, but much, much faster. “Taliban” is a very elastic term. It applies to all these people: number one, the historic Taliban led by Mullah Omar, now based in Quetta in Balochistan—Pakistan territory; number two, the Hezb-e-Islami Islamic party of former Afghan prime minister and super-warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; number three, the group of famous jihad commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, based in Waziristan—Pakistan tribal areas. Then there are at least three Pakistani Taliban groups: Mehsud, Gul Bahadur, and TNSM. And, finally, any group of Pashtun peasants who hate foreign occupation—that’s about everybody in the Pashtun tribal areas—who had their family killed by the Americans or by the Pakistani government troops or lost their poppy crops, which means their livelihood. All these on the Afghan side, there are no more than 15,000 people, according to the Afghan minister of interior, but they’re active in 17 Afghan provinces. Now, compared to the more than 60,000 US and NATO troops, not to mention the 17,000 in Obama’s surge, how to solve this riddle? For the key to the riddle, watch Part 2 of this report … (full long interview text, March 5, 2009).

..

Pepe Escobar – Brazil

Watch these videos:

• Pepe Escobar On Iraq, 03.14 min, Sep 22, 2008;
• Pepe Escobar: Can the US accept Iran as a regional power? 08.15 min, Dec 25, 2007;
• Pepe Escobar: The Taliban riddle, 07.52 min, Mar 5, 2009;
• Al-Qaeda calls for a new ‘Jihad’, 06.10 min, Sep 5, 2008.

… In a multi-segment story on the situation in Afghanistan, before the start of the upcoming surge in troops, Pepe Escobar offers his sharp commentary, calling the situation a riddle to be solved. In Part One, Escobar explains that many Afghans are fed up with the violence and would like to see more scholars and engineers, not troops because for many Afghans more foreign troops equate more violence. According to Escobar, the neo-liberal realists in the Obama administration are fed up with Afghan President Karzai–who is sarcastically referred to by many as the mayor of Kabul–and have already begun their search for a new puppet. Escobar brings to the fore the intricacies of the situation within the Taliban and their shifting corrupt alliances as they continue to forge new deals with Pakistan’s widely despised President, Asif Zardari, the widower of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. While Zardari continues to allow U.S. drones to kill Pakistani pashtuns, he continues to forge new alliances, so far three of them, with different Taliban factions … (full text, March 6, 2009).

Find him and his publications on WordPress.com; on amazon; on Asia Times online; on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

Surging Towards Disaster in the “Afpak Theatre”, by Tom Burghardt: On February 18, President Barack Obama ordered 17,000 additional U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan. Obama’s announcement will result in a major escalation of America’s bloody occupation of that war-ravaged country … // … As investigative journalist Pepe Escobar points out, “the price” that the United States and NATO will pay to have their supplies arrive from Russia is being made painfully clear to Washington: “no more encirclement, no more NATO extension, no more anti-missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland for protection against non-existent Iranian missiles. All this has to be negotiated in detail”  … (full long text, 22 February 2009).

He writes:

• … In a secret Obama letter, hand-delivered to Medvedev three weeks ago, as the New York Times revealed and the administration confirmed, the US “non-proposal proposal” essentially broke down to this: if you help us get rid of non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons, we’ll get rid of our missile shield which we don’t know if it’s any good anyway … // … Obama and Medvedev will finally meet in person for the first time on April 2, in London, on the sidelines of what will certainly be a tumultuous Group of 20 meeting discussing the global financial crisis. Russian media have reported that Medvedev has invited Obama to visit Moscow. The date may be announced in London. Obama will have plenty of time to brush up on his Godfather flicks. He’d better leave the gun in Washington and take the cannoli to Moscow. (full text, March 5, 2009).
• … In the United States, the myth rules that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) delivered the Soviets “their Vietnam”; thus this was basically a US victory, with the “freedom fighters” (copyright president Ronald Reagan) as supporting actors. It was never that simple. The Pakistani military-intelligence establishment believes since the late 1970s, that a puppet Afghanistan was essential for its “strategic depth”. It was never that simple. It’s also useful to remember today that little has changed regarding the Afghan tragedy in these past three decades. And that makes the upcoming US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) surge in Afghanistan a certified road to ruin … // … Everyone’s talking about US fighter jets and CIA Predator drones raising hell out of three secret Pakistani air bases – with Islamabad’s complicit silence. But nobody talks about the “humint”, or human intelligence, component of the US’s covert war in Afghanistan, conducted by what the New York Times defines, with spectacular hypocrisy, as “military units operating outside the normal chain of command”. US special forces are part of this deadly mix. A recent UN report identifies these US commandos as the key culprits as far as the killing of Afghan civilians is concerned. Washington happens to identify similar outfits – if they operate under a different banner, or religion – as “terrorists”. In the case of this new American breed, it’s fair to expect the Pentagon and the Washington establishment to sooner or later start calling them – in a sinister echo of recent Afghan past – “freedom fighters”. (full text, Feb 27, 2009).
• It’s September 2009. Barack Obama is the United States president. Mohammad “dialogue of civilizations” Khatami is the Iranian president. Khatami flies to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. He bumps into Obama in the corridors of the UN. With fists unclenched, they exchange pleasantries – and retire to a room for some real “face-to-face”. The 30-year – some would say 56-year – wall of mistrust between the US and Iran finally comes tumbling down. If current Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad remains a mirror image of the departed George W Bush, Khatami could not be a more fitting mirror image of Obama. Within the complex parameters of the Iranian system, he is a reformist able to reach out to conservatives and wildly popular among women, the young and progressives of all stripes. He’s running for president in the June elections – and he’s got what it takes to give Ahmadinejad a run for his rials … (full text, Feb 12, 2009).
• … Former US secretary of state Cordell Hull’s classic comment about Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo – “He’s a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch” – has been the norm for decades. From the Somozas in Nicaragua to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, from Indonesia’s Suharto to the shah of Iran, US foreign policy over the past decades has enshrined a hefty SOB gallery. This gallery symbolizes the official Washington policy of US neo-colonialism – always indirect and non-ostensive, contrary to historical examples of European colonialism … // … If Obama really wants to make the effort to understand Iran he could do no worse than read the great Iranian philosopher Daryush Shayegan, a former professor at the University of Tehran. When Khomeini died, Shayegan identified him and the shah as the two juxtaposed Irans: imperial Iran and the painful Iran of the blood of the martyr, “a juxtaposition that symbolizes an unreal dream: as the 12th century mystical poet Ruzbehan from Shiraz would say, this ‘dementia of the inaccessible’.”  The good news is that from Obama’s point of view, the “inaccessible” can become more than accessible with just a simple “we’re sorry”. (full text, Feb 11, 2009).
• … Muqtada is in a difficult position. He has to confront the problem that strategically Tehran subscribes to not attacking US troops as the best way for the Americans to eventually leave. And Muqtada at the moment is studying in Qom, the spiritual capital of Iran – he could hardly afford to antagonize his hosts. To top it all, the Sadrist movement had been adopting a Hezbollah approach and reconverting from militia activities to being firmly embedded in the Iraqi political landscape. Maliki has made his move. Now it’s time for Muqtada’s. (full text, Nov 18, 2008).
• The ultimate nightmare for White House/Pentagon designs on Middle East energy resources is not Iran after all: it’s a unified Iraqi resistance, comprising not only Sunnis but also Shi’ites. “It’s the resistance, stupid” – along with “it’s the oil, stupid”. The intimate connection means there’s no way for Washington to control Iraq’s oil without protecting it with a string of sprawling military “super-bases” … (full text, Oct 17, 2007).
• PESHAWAR, Pakistan – American commandos likely to descend on Pakistan’s tribal areas may not be too keen on acquiring the supreme fashion accessory of 2001 in the region, the Osama bin Laden T-shirt, boasting such inscriptions as “World Hero” and “The Great Mujahid of Jihad”. They’re selling briskly in Peshawar’s Saddar bazaar for less than US$2 a pop … PESHAWAR, Pakistan – American commandos likely to descend on Pakistan’s tribal areas may not be too keen on acquiring the supreme fashion accessory of 2001 in the region, the Osama bin Laden T-shirt, boasting such inscriptions as “World Hero” and “The Great Mujahid of Jihad”. They’re selling briskly in Peshawar’s Saddar bazaar for less than US$2 a pop … (full text, August 30, 2001).

links:

Full Version: Kosovo “independence”;

AfPak backstage: Bombing the ephemeral Hindu Kush “Ho Chi Minh trail” nurtures the Khemer Rouge of the Khyber–the Taliban, by Moin Ansari, March 3, 2009;

Afghanistan on wikipedia;

Google News-results for Afghanistan;

Google Blog-results for Afghanistan;

War in Afghanistan on wikipedia;

Afghanistan online;

The CIA world factbook on Afghanistan;

Google Blog-results for Taliban;

Google Blog-results for Peace in Afghanistan.

Vina Mazumdar calls herself a chronicler and recorder of the movement in India. She also fondly refers to herself as the grandmother of Women’s Studies in India. As the Member Secretary of the Committee on the Status of Women in India she was instrumental in drafting what is now known as the Towards Equality report, which has been the turning point both for Women’s Studies and women’s movement in India. She is the co-founder of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in Delhi and has served as its Director for many years. This pioneering institution has greatly influenced the course Women’s Studies has taken in India. Vina Mazumdar is 76 years old and is still active voicing her protest and influencing policies regarding women. (on Sparrow online … and click there on view for a 1.25 min video-explanation).

… She is an Honours Graduate and D.Phil from Oxford University. In her professional career she has been a teacher of Political Science in the Universities of Patna and Berhampur, an Officer in the UGC Secretariat and Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Simla. She was Member Secretary, Committee on the Status of Women in India, and later Director, Programme of Women’s Studies, Indian Council of Social Science Research for five years (1975-80). She was founder-Director of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi from 1980 to 1991, and thereafter was Senior Fellow at CWDS and JP Naik National Fellow, ICSSR for two years … (full text).

She says: “Extensive discussions with over 10,000 women from different backgrounds revealed our own ignorance and shattered our self images as social scientists and as daughters of independence. (1000peacewomen).

..

Vina Mazumdar – India

She works for the Centre for Women’s Development Studies CWDS.

NEW DELHI: Women’s groups and activists on Thursday submitted an “open petition” to the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court demanding review of a Division Bench judgment reducing the life sentence for a rape convict after he passed the Civil Services examination. If it is not reviewed, a special leave petition will be filed in the Supreme Court, said the signatories, numbering over 100. The judgment set an extremely retrograde and wrong precedent, the women’s groups said registering their protest … // … The signatories include the All-India Democratic Women’s Association, the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, the Guild of Services, the Joint Women’s Programme, the National Federation of Indian Women, the Young Women’s Christian Association, Vina Mazumdar, Romila Thapar, Upendra Baxi, Zoya Hasan, and other eminent social activists and representatives of civil society groups.  (full text, Feb 27, 2009).

The book: Note of Dissent, by Lotika Sarkar and Vina Mazumdar – read the first page.

Find her and her publicationson openLibrary; on amazon; on CWDS/papers; on alibris; on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

1000peacewomen: Vina Mazumdar (born 1927) is called “the grandmother of women’s studies in South Asia”. Her transformation from an activist academic to a grassroots intervention worker began with a project that took her across the country. Her distress at the condition of women migrant laborers was the impetus for an experiment on the use of wastelands to provide sustenance for rural women. The project, widely emulated, changed the lives of the women. Vina’s mix of academic enquiry, dialoguing with policy-planners, and engaging with grassroots initiatives, is a whole new way of looking at women’s issues. (She) is a social scientist by training, a women’s activist and feminist by instinct and choice, a “troublemaker” by her own confession, and a “recorder and chronicler of the Indian Women’s Movement”. Vina is fondly referred to as “the grandmother of women’s studies in South Asia”.

Born into a middleclass Bengali family, Vina grew up in an atmosphere that instilled in her the value of education, simplicity – and the love of argument and discussion. She studied at a Diocesan Girls School run by the British Protestant Mission, graduating from the Benaras Hindu University. She went to Oxford in the 1960s and, later, in the 1970s to complete her Bachelors and Doctorate.

From 1951-65, she taught Political Science at Patna University, trying to energize the curriculum and the examination system, especially during her tenure as first secretary of the Patna University Teachers Association. Her abiding interest in educational reform prompted her move to the University Grants Commission, the apex body for the national university system.

Her appointment in the Committee on the Status of Women in India radically altered the direction of her life and work. The committee, appointed by the Government of India in 1971, was reconstituted in 1973 with Vina, a later entrant, as member secretary. The committee was given an extended term of one year to finalize its report, to enable the government to face the first UN-sponsored World Conference on Women at Mexico in 1975, after debating the Report in Parliament. The resurgent women’s movement of the 1970s acknowledged the Report, Towards Equality, as its “Founding Text”.

Traveling across the country and analyzing volumes of research and writings on women left an ineradicable impression about the large-scale marginalization, poverty, and invisibility of the majority of India’s laboring women–”the hidden and unacknowledged majority”. The concern and challenges thrown up by Towards Equality became a lifelong passionate commitment that had nothing to do with the course of her career. “Our findings through extensive discussions with over 10,000 women from different backgrounds in most states/cultural regions revealed our own ignorance and shattered our self images as social scientists /teachers/and as ‘daughters of Independence’,” she says.

Vina headed the Women’s Studies Program Unit from 1975-1980 and organized follow-up action–research and publication–on issues identified by the committee’s report. In 1980, with some like-minded persons, she founded the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), an autonomous research institution, to carry on the task of fighting for women’s rights. Right from its inception, CWDS opted for a ‘catalyst’ role to promote debates on women’s rights, and to work towards the elimination of obstacles to gender equality and justice.

Vina was also primarily responsible for the incorporation of a section on “education for women’s equality” in the National Education Policy (1986). A national seminar on this theme brought together women academics, policy-planners, and allies within the government to draft a section that iterated and emphasized the social responsibilities of the education system.

This was also the beginning of one of the most crucial projects that Vina was involved in: For the past 24 years, she has been working with groups of poor peasant women in two districts of West Bengal. The work, funded by the International Labor Organization (ILO), began in 1981, primarily with migrant women agricultural workers and forest-dependent (tribal, indigenous community) women belonging to the Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, and other marginalized communities.

The partnership began as an experiment in mobilizing women’s groups around wasteland development and livelihood issues. Initially, Vina began exploring the travails of poor migrant women workers who peregrinated every year for about eight to nine months in search of wage labor. She organized a rural women’s camp in collaboration with the government of West Bengal. The two days of deliberations revealed the subhuman conditions under which the women worked, migrating to other districts, and returning home after several months to debris and a life of privation. The annual migratory process meant high infant mortality, indebtedness, and brutish sexual exploitation.

The biggest challenge, Vina realized, was to create productive work in the women’s own villages, the creation of work opportunities locally. Thus began an odyssey: in 1981, she organized a group of assetless women from Bankura district, West Bengal; they managed to obtain eight acres of wasteland, which was registered in the name of the organization. It was the first time that these women owned an asset. It took three years of backbreaking labor by the group to demonstrate that wasteland can be regenerated to provide sustenance to women.

The experiment generated a debate, within both the ILO and the government, about the clear utility of involving women in wasteland development. The Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests made an explicit policy pronouncement to involve poor women in wasteland development and joint forest management. The impact of the experiment on local women’s groups has also been widely acknowledged.

It is remarkable that the project was such a resounding success. The region that Vina decided to work was severely deforested. The biggest challenge was to prevent seasonal migration. The initial effort to register the land in the name of the women’s group was resisted by both the men in the family and the local community. Local tribal leaders, vested interests, the local elite, and those managing tribal institutions and local bodies resisted the very idea of mobilized women. The families which donated the land wanted women from their families represented on the committees. Then, once the desiccated, ochre land turned emerald, these families demanded that the land be returned to them. It took all of Vina’s skills and resources to navigate local power politics.

The experiment has prompted several replications elsewhere. The ILO itself later involved SEWA, Ahmedabad, and Seva Mandir, Udaipur, in similar enterprises. CWDS has also repeated the assay in another district in West Bengal, helping women to reclaim land that was allocated to them under the anti-poverty program.

“We were not prepared at all for the sheer intellectual and personal development demonstrated by so many of the women,” Vina writes. “The linguistic ability that they developed, the analytical and imaginative capacity to articulate and to adapt their statements or presentations after assessing the receiving or the absorption capacity of the people to whom they were talking demonstrated extraordinary mental and communication skills. I have been a teacher for 16 years, and was supposed to be a good communicator, but the way these women changed their presentations to changing audiences left me utterly amazed and thrilled.”

This was a unique initiative by a social scientist, who involved herself with grassroots action despite resistance from within her own organization. But Vina dismisses the idea that the achievement was hers at all: the women’s organization demonstrated “a great political dynamism and themselves became the agents of change”. Combining canny academic entrepreneurship with activism, she believes that in order to sustain women’s livelihood and political action, they have to learn organizational management.

Also, by providing opportunities to tribal women in non-threatening ways, and helping them break their shackles of poverty and deprivation, she has managed to crack the culture of silence that kept tribal women in segregation and privation and for centuries.

Today, she continues to work with poor peasant women, admiring their grit and ability to absorb new knowledge, and to build on their traditional knowledge base. Vina is a member of several prominent academic/advisory boards and has received awards from UNIFEM, the Association for Women in International Development, and the YWCA of India for innovative leadership.

Vina Mazumdar has eschewed models, conventions, and markers in her long career. Her amalgam of pursuing academic inquiry, dialoguing with policy-planners, and engaging with the grassroots initiatives of rural women has forged a whole new way of looking at women’s issues. (on 1000peacewomen).

links:

Google book-results:

• Writing the Women’s Movement, By Mala Khullar, Ihwa Yŏja Taehakkyo, 2005, 558 pages;
• The Cross-cultural Study of Women, By Margot I. Duley, Mary I. Edwards, 1986, 439 pages;
• Women, Quotas and Politics, By Drude Dahlerup, 2006, 312 pages;
• Women in modern India, By Geraldine Hancock Forbes, Gordon Johnson, 1999, 290 pages;

ABEbooks.

Jestina Mukoko is a Zimbabwean human rights activist and the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project.

A journalist by training, and former newsreader with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, she was abducted from her home north of Harare on December 3, 2008. A witness said that twelve armed men abducted Mukoko at night from her home. Dumisani Muleya of Business Day said that she was “abducted by suspected state agents for allegedly being involved in plans for anti government demonstrations.” One week later the Zimbabwe High Court ordered the Zimbabwe Republic Police to look for Mukoko. On December 24, it was reported by the state-run Herald newspaper that Mukoko had appeared in court in Harare to face charges of attempting to recruit people for military training to try to overthrow the government. Her whereabouts during the previous three weeks were unclear and the Zimbabwean police denied opposition claims that she was in their custody. Along with several other individuals, Mukoko was remanded in custody and the case referred to the Zimbabwean High Court … (on wikipedia, last modified on 6 March 2009).

I met Jestina Mukoko two years ago at the Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust. She was working on an innovative peace-building program for ZIMCET, one that brought together political opponents in small towns and cities across Zimbabwe to work together to stop violence that had become so routine during all political elections. One man from Chimanimani we met with said the program had changed his life … (full text, December 10, 2008).

..

Jestina Mukoko – Zimbabwe

Watch these videos:

• A Message about Jestina Mukoko, Director of Zimbabwe Peace … , 03.39 min, Dec 20, 2008;
• Zimbabwe’s Jestina Mukoko and Others Enters Court, 05.35 min,Dec 25, 2008;
• L’opposante Jestina Mukoko remise en liberté sous caution, short, Mar 3, 2009.

On Jestina Mukoko’s release:

• … Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe granted Mukoko bail in the amount of US$600. She must now report twice a week to police in Norton, about 30 kilometers northwest of Harare where home is located, and surrender the deed to her residence. Though technically free on bail, Mukoko, director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, remained in the Avenues Clinic in Harare where for some weeks she had been receiving court-ordered treatment under police guard for injuries sustained during her ordeal. (full text, 02 March 2009).
• … Mukoko was kidnapped December 3 and remained missing for a month until police produced her and proceeded to bring the coup conspiracy charges against her. Her Zimbabwe Peace Project compiles extensive documentation of human rights abuses. It was a major source of information on political violence mainly directed at MDC members in the aftermath of the March 2008 presidential, general and local elections … (full text, March 3, 2009).
• … The release of Ms Mukoko and the others in Harare, constitutes an important victory for the Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been pressing Mr Mugabe to let them go. Ms Mukoko, who headed a group that documented state-sponsored acts of murder and torture committed before Mr Mugabe’s June election run-off against Mr Tsvangirai, was held for weeks in secret locations. She was beaten on the soles of her feet and forced to kneel on gravel during interrogation intended to force her to confess to recruiting youths for military training in Botswana … (full text, March 4, 2009).
• … Both were victims of enforced disappearance, unlawful arrest, detention, and torture by state security agents. They were released on Saturday, after each paying US$600 bail and depositing surety of at least US$20,000 in title deeds. A third man, Fidelis Chiramba was also released. He remains in hospital receiving treatment. Ten other detainees were granted bail. Four are likely to be released shortly. The other six will remain in custody because they are unable to present title deeds as part of the bail requirements. Three other detainees, Andrison Manyere, Gandhi Mudzingwa and Kisimusi Dhlamini were denied bail. On Tuesday, the High Court in Harare dismissed the state’s application opposing granting bail to Roy Bennett, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) treasurer general who was arrested by police in February. The MDC is anxious to see whether the state will comply with the court order. “While welcoming news about the release of Jestina Mukoko, Broderick Takawira and Fidelis Charamba and the granting of bail of 11 other political detainees, we also call on the Zimbabwean government to immediately end persecution of human rights defenders and political activists,” said Veronique Aubert, Deputy Programme Director for Amnesty International’s Africa Programme. More than a dozen detainees remain in custody in Zimbabwe and they seem to have all been arrested simply for exercising their rights to freedom of association and expression … (full text, March 4, 2009).
• THE deal between the Attorney-General (AG)’s office and defence lawyers for political detainees to drop cases against the state in exchange for bail will not stop the accused from suing the government or the people responsible for their abductions and torture, legal experts said yesterday. The pact, which saw the release of several human rights and MDC activists, among them Zimbabwe Peace Project director Jestina Mukoko, was made at a meeting held last Friday between senior officials from the AG’s office and defence lawyers representing the activists. According to Veritas, a group of lawyers, the state’s condition for withdrawal of all defence applications currently pending in the High Court and the Supreme Court was a limited one. The lawyers said:  “It does not prevent future legal action by the abductees against the state and the state agents responsible for their abduction, unlawful detention and torture” … (full text, 06 March 2009).

Find her and her publications on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Images-search; on Google News-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

… The Mukoko saga is therefore an opportunity for the nation to reflect on some of the ills still bedevilling us notwithstanding the formation of the GNU. However egregious their supposed crimes – and let’s not forget Botswana and South Africa have rejected the charges of militia training as ludicrous and self-serving – the activists did not deserve to be abducted, tortured, beaten on the soles of their feet and denied medical attention. Then there has been the abuse of Section 121 of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act to deny suspects release on bail even when the High Court had granted them bail. The section provides prosecutors with the opportunity to file a notice of intention to appeal against a bail ruling. By noting an intention to appeal, a magistrate’s order to release a suspect is immediately suspended, giving the prosecution seven days to prepare an appeal, during which time the accused must remain in police custody. This law has been employed selectively in political cases and has no place in a democratic society. MDC treasurer Roy Bennett who was granted bail by the High Court has also been a victim of this cynical manoeuvre by the state. He was granted bail by the High Court last week and the state immediately invoked Section 121 to keep him behind bars. Now the state has appealed to the Supreme Court to reverse the decision of the High Court. That is political punishment writ large … (full text, 05 March 2009).

On Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s wife’s car accident on Friday night:

• Tsvangirai’s car (has been) hit by US contractor’s truck, March 7, 2009; … and: Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was injured and his wife Susan was killed in a car crash late on Friday, party officials confirmed, adding that suspicious circumstances could indicate foul play … and: Cross said an early investigation team sent to the spot immediately after the accident occurred reported that the front left tyre had had a blowout. “They were taking videos and pictures and then the police came and arrested them, and took their videos and pictures,” he said. “We don’t like that.” (full text, March 7, 2009);
• JOHANNESBURG – The fatal car accident on Friday night, killing the wife of Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and injuring Mr. Tsvangirai himself, has left many Zimbabweans suspicious about whether this was truly an accident, or  an attempted assassination. Tsvangirai himself says the truck that sideswiped his car, drove “deliberately” at him. But members of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party say that they are withholding judgment as they carry out their own investigation in parallel with that of the police … // … Yet, today, MDC secretary general and Zimbabwe’s finance minister Tendai Biti said that the car accident could have been avoided if Tsvangirai had been given a proper security detail befitting a prime minister. “Logic would have demanded that police escort be provided to the prime minister to warn other traffic, and this tragedy could have been avoided,” Mr. Biti told reporters in Harare. When speaking of Tsvangirai’s late wife, Susan, Mr. Biti became emotional. “She was a pillar of strength. She was always there for the President and for the party.” Accidental or intentional, the death of Susan Tsvangirai is likely to have a profound effect on the prime minister and his party. “This comes at a very difficult time, particularly for Morgan,” says Mr. Tungwarara. “To lose a loved one and someone who was a pillar of strength, who helped him get through very rough times, it doesn’t help out, given the stress levels that MDC members are experiencing.” (full text, March 7, 2009).

links:

Some few Google Groups discussing Zimbabwe: soc.culture.zimbabwe; Zimbabwe Fight On Dont mourn; PEN KENYA CHAPTER; Swaziland Solidarity Network Forum ( with a contribution); Zambia social forum; FJD info (This group is announcement-only /with African items);

Alerte Google – droits de l’homme;

Watershed for Mugabe as soldiers rampage, Dec 4, 2008;

Zimbabwe court orders police to look for activist, Dec 9, 2008;

Zimbabwe court dismisses state challenge to Bennett bail, March 3, 2009;

Categories on wikipedia:

• Year of birth missing (for living people);
• Zimbabwean journalists;
• Zimbabwean human rights activists;
• Zimbabwean people stubs;
• Activist stubs;
• Political people stubs;
• Articles missing birth or death information;
• Zimbabwean people by occupation;
• Zimbabwean writers.

Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative reporter with a track record for making sense of complex and little understood matters. He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire. He has also served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. Baker received a 2005 Deadline Club award for his exclusive reporting on George W. Bush’s military record. He is the founder of WhoWhatWhy /the Real News Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization, operating at whowhatwhy.com. (on family of secrets.com).

He says (on Bush): … “Based on early feedback, I’d say there are a number of contenders. Could be the four chapters of never-before-revealed facts surrounding the JFK assassination. Or the evidence I have uncovered suggesting a new interpretation of Watergate. Some are most intrigued by the new examples of George W. as a naughty fellow and moral hypocrite – including on the matter of abortion. And some say that my examination of W.’s military service record is especially effective in settling the dispute over whether this eager-beaver “warrior king” skipped out on his own military obligations. Finally, some are most struck by the new evidence of a cynical calculation behind George W’s so-called religious rebirth. For me, the big story is simply the cumulative sense, based on hundreds and hundreds of fresh facts, of the extent to which elites write our history. And the realization that, as we flee the Bush years, we remain utterly in the dark about so much … (on russbakeer.com, December 30, 2008).

Russ Baker is the founder of the Real News Project (seems still under construction today). He may be reached by e-mail. (on The Nation, 2008).

His website.

..

Russ Baker – USA

Watch these videos:

• Russ Baker 02 10 09 You Tube Compression, 58.31 min, January 31, 2009;
• Russ Baker speaks on Bush and war, 5.07 min, January 20, 2007;
• GRITtv Panel: Janeane Garofalo, Russ Baker and Jeff, 27.32 min, Jan 16, 2009.

… According to his own website: “Russ Baker is an old-fashioned muckraking journalist and pamphleteer using the newest technologies. In his reporting and writing he brings the best of mainstream methods (balance and rigor) to the alternative media, and the best of the alternative media (passion for the truth and the larger story) to the mainstream. He focuses on getting past the rhetoric to expose the hidden levers and machinations that shape our world. Baker’s investigative reporting, analysis pieces, features, and essays on politics, power, and perceptions have appeared in many of the world’s finest publications” … (full text).

Reviews of the book: Family of Secrets, The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America, by Russ Baker, (Bloomsbury. 577 pp.):

• He (Gore Vidal) has some kind things to say about Family of Secrets, beginning at about the four-minute mark: There’s a wonderful book, by the way, I’m reading called Family of Secrets by…Russ Baker. He spent many years on it. And it’s a family — forgive me, Bushes and Bushettes — a family of criminals. Why they’re not all in jail I don’t know. If I seem a little dazed, I’ve been reading about their crimes, and proposed crimes, and how they got away with it. (on familyofsecrets.com, February 25, 2009);
• … Baker begins this dispiriting tome with a couple of reasonable questions that probably are on a great many minds as George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency sputters to a close: “What did the ascendancy of this frighteningly inadequate man signify? Could anything be learned from the George W. Bush phenomenon that would help us understand how we Americans choose our leaders and chart our collective course?” … (full text, January 7, 2009);
• Halfway through the concluding chapter of Family of Secrets, Russ Baker mentions, not entirely modestly, that when a colleague heard some of the things he would be disclosing in his almost 600-page book about the Bush family and its connections to John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Watergate and many other pivotal events, the colleague suggested, only half in jest, that the book be called Everything You Thought You Knew Is Wrong … (full text);
• family of secrets – flowing data, added by visual think map on 15 February 2009;
• as long as Bush is trying to shape his legacy on his way out the door … Russ Baker examines the history of the Bush family … interviewed hundreds of people … tons of footnotes … 577pp. Baker explains the 4 generations of the Bush family and the tentacles of their power and influence … (full text);
• Linda Eckstein sent this graphic along to show the main ideas of Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets. In Linda’s words, “[T]he idea was for me to come up with a visual representation of the scope and complexity of Baker’s book. In a way, it’s the unWordle. Wordle only analyzes what is said, sometimes it’s necessary to remind the public of what is NOT said” … (full text).

… BuzzFlash has often said that “conspiracy theories” exist because a threshold of people believe that the official version of an event or personal history does not pass the believability test.  But then the fun begins, because theories are just that, so you become an advocate of one perspective or the other, hopefully based on the strength of the argument and the backing of documentation.  But that becomes more difficult as time passes and access to the unofficial version of events becomes more difficult … (full text, 12/30/2008);

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Russ Baker: “on assignment… but not ours”, 36.16 min, January 14th, 2009.

The Top 10 Corporate Democrats-For-Hire, By Russ Baker, AlterNet. August 24, 2006: They claim to be ‘centrists,’ but these D.C. Dems – whose corporate agendas aren’t too different from Bush administration policies – are living proof that the system needs fixing … (fullt text, August 24, 2006).

• .. In 2004, Baker devoted himself largely to researching stories that provided disturbing insights into the pre-presidential behavior of George W. Bush. He also explored the integrity of the voting system and examined instances of alleged election fraud.
• In 2005, Baker founded Who What Why/The Real News Project, a news organization dedicated to producing ground-breaking, transformative, independent investigative journalism.
• In 2009, Baker’s book, FAMILY OF SECRETS: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces That Put it in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America is being published by Bloomsbury Press.
• … (full text, 2008).

Find him and his publications on AlterNet; on amazon; on alibri; at Katra on March 8, 2007; on ZoomInfo; on freelibrary; on Google Video-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Images-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

… Baker has received Society of Professional Journalists, Mencken and Common Cause awards, served as a panelist for the national conference of Investigative Reporters & Editors, and been a member of the adjunct faculty at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He appears frequently in the electronic media to discuss current events. (on MaximsNews).

He writes:

• - IN THE CLINTONS’ PURSUIT OF POWER, there is no such thing as a strange bedfellow. One recently exposed inamorata was Norman Hsu, the mysterious businessman from Hong Kong who brought in $850,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign before being unmasked as a fugitive. Her campaign dismissed Hsu as someone who’d slipped through the cracks of an otherwise unimpeachable system for vetting donors, and perhaps he was. The same cannot be said for the notorious financier Alan Quasha, whose involvement with Clinton is at least as substantial – and still under wraps. Political junkies will recall Quasha as the controversial figure who bailed out George W. Bush’s failing oil company in 1986, folding Bush into his company, Harken Energy, thus setting him on the path to a lucrative and high-profile position as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and the presidency … (full long 5 pages, October 18, 2007);
• - … With the growing evidence of the Bush Administration’s effort to control and spin the news, put out false stories and anoint fake reporters, it’s apparent that few insider “revelations” or leaks of any kind should be taken at face value. Put bluntly, we are being naïve if we do not at least scrutinize each new development for signs of chicanery from right-wing allies of the president, or even from the White House itself. According to the Times, Bush’s “old friend” Doug Wead secretly taped more than a dozen conversations with the then-Texas Governor between 1998 and 2000. Summarizing the most eye-opening material, the article notes that on the tapes Bush “weighs the political risks and benefits of his religious faith, discusses campaign strategy – and appears to have acknowledged trying marijuana” … (full interview text, 07 Mar 2005);
• - … To skeptical observers, the strategy of Karadzic and his supporters is to outwait the international community, and then, when the foreigners leave, to annex the Serbian enclave of Bosnia to Serbia proper, despite the fact that it once housed huge numbers of ethnic Muslims and Croats, who have been slowly returning to their prewar homes. Karadzic’s continued freedom gives those returnees a sense that all has not yet been put right, while his aura of invincibility has grown among Serbia’s Serbs and the 700,000 Bosnian Serbs. Among Bosnian Muslims, constant speculation and conspiracy theories abound–especially the belief that the international community leadership does not want Karadzic caught … (full long text, January/February 2004).

Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer, by Russ Baker, October 28, 2004.

links:

The Power Elite, by C. Wright Mills;

Bush’s mess left to others to clean up, Dec 2, 2008;

Bush Secrecy.org;

Obama is cleaning up George Bush’s mess, 02/21/2009;

Power Elite on wikipedia;

The rise of the superclass;

Reuters says cleaning up Bush’s mess could cost a trillion, March 5, 2009;

Poem: Bush’s Mess, May 29, 2007.

Emmeline Pankhurst (née Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was a political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement. Although she was widely criticised for her militant tactics, her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women’s suffrage in Britain. However, historians disagree about whether she did more to help or hinder public support for the cause. Born and raised in Manchester by politically active parents, Pankhurst was introduced at a young age to the women’s suffrage movement. Although her parents encouraged her to prepare herself for life as a wife and mother, she attended the École Normale de Neuilly in Paris. In 1878 she married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister known for supporting women’s right to vote; they had five children over the next ten years. He also supported her activities outside the home, and she quickly became involved with the Women’s Franchise League, which advocated suffrage for women. When that organisation broke apart, she attempted to join the left-leaning Independent Labour Party (the ILP was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom) through her friendship with socialist Keir Hardie, but was initially refused membership by the local branch of the Party on account of her gender. She also worked as a Poor Law Guardian, where she was startled by harsh conditions in Manchester workhouses … (full long text).

… Richard and Emmeline were immediately attracted to each other and although there was a significant age difference, he was forty-four and she was only twenty, Richard Goulden gave permission for the marriage to take place. Emmeline had four children in the first six years of marriage: Christabel Pankhurst (1880), Sylvia Pankhurst (1882), Frank (1884) and Adela (1885). During these years Richard and Emmeline continued their involvement in the struggle for women’s rights and in 1889 helped form the pressure group, the Women’s Franchise League … // … Emmeline continued her involvement in politics but she grew gradually disillusioned with the existing women’s political organizations and in 1903 she founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). At first Emmeline intended that the main aim of the organisation was to recruit working class women into the struggle for the vote … (full text).

A Conservative Revolutionary: Emmeline Pankhurst (1857-1928), a long essay by Carl Rollyson.

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Emmeline Pankhurst – England (1858 – 1928):

• Emmeline Pankhurst is shown, above (center), being released from a English jail after yet another arrest. The suffragists who were arrested went on hunger strikes and were force – fed by the police – usually through a funnel thrust down their throats and food dumped into it. The damage to the women’s health was astounding. The Brit police (and later the police in the U.S.) would arrest the women, keep them for up to 30 days, release them until they got healthy again and then arrested them yet again and again. It was called the cat and mouse game … (fullt text right column).
• … When these measures risked taking lives, the infamous Cat & Mouse Act was passed so that a dangerously weakened hunger striker would be released and then rearrested when strong enough to continue her sentence. Under its terms, Mrs. Pankhurst, age 54 in 1912, went to prison 12 times that year. No wonder she railed, “The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood. The militancy of women has harmed no human life save the lives of those who fought the battle of righteousness” … (full text).
• Cat and Mouse Act, nickname for a British law of 1913 — the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act—that allowed the government to release and later re-imprison suffragettes who went on hunger strike in jail … (full text on MS Encarta).
• Google Web-search for Cat and Mouse Act.

She worked for the British suffragette movement … (and she) led the movement to win the right for women to vote … and: … In 1918 the Representation of the People Act gave voting rights to women over 30. Emmeline died on 14 June 1928, shortly after women were granted equal voting rights with men (at 21).

Watch this videos:

• Suffragettes In England-Emmeline Pankhurst, 10.24 min, Sep 9, 2008;
• Suffragists and Suffragettes – Women and the Vote, 06.51 min, Dec 11, 2008.

She said: … “the Government must not think that they can stop this agitation. It will go on … We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in out efforts to become law-makers … and: “We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half” … and: “What is the use of fighting for a vote if we have not got a country to vote in?” … (on better world heroes.com).

Sunday March 8th is International Women’s Day and there’s a wonderous array of events going on in the region to tickle your fancy…here’s the low down: Where better to start than the home of the suffragette movement; The Pankhurst Centre are celebrating International Women’s Day with heritage talks and information stalls from 10am, followed by an international lunch at around 12pm. In the afternoon (1.30pm) there will be a whole host of workshops on offer, ranging from drama, tap dancing, djing, African drumming and creative writing. There will be a crèche available at this time. The Pankhurst Centre’s evening event will begin at 6pm with entertainment from the urban gypsies … (full text, published: 5 March 2009).

25th February 2009: On this day in … 1913 – Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst went on trial for a bomb attack on the house of David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer … (on newshopper).

Find her and her publications on Google Video-search; on Google Images-results; on Google Group-search; on Google Book-search and -results; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Blog-search.

After years of the BBC attacking Thatcherism and the lady herself, a miracle: the Corporation is about to broadcast a film which depicts her as a cross between Elizabeth I and the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. The production, which includes some witheringly satirical cameos, is not quite a hagiography, and it catches Mrs T’s habit of thinking she was right the whole time … (full text).

Emmeline Pankhurst was born in Manchester, nee Goulden, and married Richard Pankhurst. He was a firm believer in the social and political emancipation of women and his ideas did a lot to bolster the beliefs of Emmeline … //… During the famous militant acts of the WSPU, Emmeline Pankhurst took on a decisive role that saw her being arrested on a number of occasions – six times between 1908 and 1912. As the Suffragette movement became more militant, so society took a more hard line view on their activities. The 1913 Derby and the act of Emily Wilding Davison shocked and outraged society. However, during World War One, Emmeline Pankhurst encouraged all women to do what they could for the war effort. There is a definite link between the work women did in World War One and their enfranchisement in 1918 – though historians have questioned just how important that link was … (full text).

Freedom or death:

• - She said also: … “When women asked questions in political meetings, and failed to get answers, they were not doing anything militant. to ask questions at political meetings is an acknowledged right of all people who attend public meetings; certainly in my country, men have always done it, and I hope they do it in America, because it seems to me that if you allow people to enter your legislatures without asking them any questions as to what they are going to do when they get there you are not exercising your citizen rights and your citizen’s duties as you ought. “At any rate in Great Britain it is a custom, a time-honored one, to ask questions of candidates for Parliament and ask questions of members of the government. No man was ever put out of a public meeting for asking a question until Votes for Women came onto the political horizon. The first people who were put out of a political meeting for asking questions, were women; they were brutally ill-used; they found themselves in jail before twenty-four hours had expired. (full speech, Nov 13, 1913).
• – See the same:  This speech was delivered in Hartford, Connecticut on November 13, 1913, published on The Guardian, 27 April 2007.
• – Germaine Greer writes: “Emmeline Pankhurst made her most famous speech on a fundraising tour of the US in autumn 1913. During the preceding 18 months she had been imprisoned 12 times, but had served no more than 30 days, all of them on hunger strike. According to her daughter and comrade, Christabel Pankhurst, prison staff never dared to force-feed her. In response to public revulsion, force-feeding was abandoned in 1913 and the “Cat and Mouse Act” brought in, which provided that fasting female inmates whose health was suffering be released until their health improved, then rearrested as often as necessary until their sentence was served out … (full text, April 27, 2007).

links:

The International Women’s Day on HREA.org;

HIS-120 MODERN EUROPE, 1789 – Present;

Great speeches of the 20th century;

The Year of the Woman was a popular label attached to 1992 after the election of a number of female Senators in the United States;

Third-wave Feminism: refers to a feminist movement that gained popularity in the 1990s … third-wave theory usually incorporates elements of queer theory, transgender politics and a rejection of the gender binary, anti-racism and women-of-color consciousness, womanism, post-colonial theory, critical theory, postmodernism, transnationalism, ecofeminism, libertarian feminism, and new feminist theory;

Chartism – and Chartist

Spartacus Educational and its Spartacus blog;, and its links to SOS Children’s Villages and Family of secrets, (the bushs dynasty, by Russ Baker);

some links for Suffragette: on wikipedia; on BBC;on punch cartoons; on museum of London; on The Guardian: anniversary of right to vote; on UK parliament /archives; on Spartacus.

The History Learning Site, and its Britain’s political changes 1700 – 1900;

Categories on wikipedia:

• Suffragists;
• History of women’s rights in the United States;
• Suffrage campaign in the United Kingdom;
• Feminism and history;
• Third-wave Feminism (as category);
• History of civil rights in the United States;
• Women’s suffrage;
• British political movements;
• Social history of the United Kingdom;
• Protests in the United Kingdom;
• Political campaigns;
• Feminism in the United Kingdom.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Born in 1920 of politically active Jewish parents in Vienna, Irma Schwager fled to Belgium in 1938 and then to France. Detained in a camp, she escaped and joined the resistance movement. This experience led her to peace work. And the way that women are affected by wars made her an advocate for the independence of women and against structural violence. After Austria’s liberation from fascism, she returned and became involved in the International Democratic Women’s Federation. She is an advocate for the implementation of the goals of the United Nations Conference on women, and for disarmament … (full text).

Irma Schwager (* 31. Mai 1920 in Wien als Irma Wieselberg) ist eine österreichische antifaschistische Widerstandskämpferin, Politikerin und Philanthropin. Eine erste politische Bewusstseinsbildung erfolgte in der Ära des Austrofaschismus, in der Irma Wieselberg als Schülerin die Restriktionen des autoritären Ständestaates zu spüren bekam. Sie flüchtete nach dem Anschluss 1938 nach Belgien und von dort nach Frankreich, während ihre Eltern dem Holocaust zum Opfer fielen. Nach Kriegsausbruch in einem Internierungslager festgehalten, entkam sie und schloss sich der Résistance an. Irma Schwager betätigte sich im Rahmen der exilösterreichischen Front de libération nationale aktiv an der „Mädelarbeit“ … She says: “Recognize injustice, never again fascism, never again war – this maxim determined my life”. (0n 1000peacewomen).

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Irma Schwager – Austria

She works for the Women’s International Democratic Federation.

Watch these videos (in german):

• Irma Schwager am 70. Jahrestag d. Annexion Österreichs, 07.14 min, Jul 25, 2008;
• Irma Schwager über die Notwendigkeit von Widerstand, 5.21 min, July 29, 2008.

Find her and her publications on ; on Google Video-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search.

Einige Texte auf deutsch:

• Widerstand gegen Unmenschlichkeit und Unrecht wird immer notwendig sein;
• Irma Schwager – Eine Frau im Widerstand;
• Geduld ist eine revolutionäre Eigenschaft;
• 70 Jahre Widerstand, 13. Feber 2008.

Et un texte en français: L’Österreichische Freiheitsfront, une organisation de réfugiés dans la Résistance belge au nazisme.

(0n 1000peacewomen): … Born in 1920 to politically active Jewish parents in Vienna, Irma Schwager fled to Belgium in 1938 and then to France. Detained in a camp, she escaped and joined the resistance movement. This experience led her to peace work. And the way that women are affected by wars made her an advocate for the independence of women and against structural violence. After Austria’s liberation from fascism, she returned and became involved in the International Democratic Women’s Federation.

She is an advocate for the implementation of the goals of the United Nations Conference on women and for disarmament.Recently, a group of women sat together while Elfriede Jelinek’s speech on the occasion of her Nobel Prize for Literature was on the radio. The lively chatter went silent. Irma Schwager wanted to hear exactly what Elfriede had to say with her complex word cascades. That is how Irma is: always interested, always committed, always informed and alert in following the events of the time, past and present.

Irma Schwager has inspired this productive curiosity in her colleagues. In the Austrian Federation of Democratic Women, of which she was long director, she educated the younger generation in political alertness. “There was a time when almost every person was politicized,” she once said. “In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany and this danger was also visible in Austria long before 1938.”

Born in 1920 of Jewish parents, Irma experienced the pogroms in the streets of Vienna as a young girl, when Jews were picked up and forced to clean streets amidst the hoots of bystanders. In 1938 the first transports to Dachau took place. While Irma fled the country, her parents, who ran a small shop, stayed in Vienna. Both they and two of her brothers died in the Holocaust.

At age 18 Irma started out for England, but never arrived, instead staying illegally in Belgium and joining a group of political emigrants. In the discussions she began to understand that “you are not only a victim, you not only can resist, you have to.” With the German invasion in May 1940 the situation in occupied Belgium got so critical for Irma that she fled to France. There she was detained in the camp Gurs and joined an illegal Communist organization. With the help of the French resistance movement she succeeded in fleeing the camp.

Now the daily political routine in the Resistance began for Irma. The Austrians made up a group of their own. While the young men tried to infiltrate different positions of the Wehrmacht in order to agitate against the war there, the girls made contact with the soldiers and tried to convince them to turn against the war.

In 1943 when Irma was pregnant, she was sent to her husband who was also active in the Resistance in one of the northern departments. She gave birth to her daughter, with fake documents, and experienced the solidarity of her French comrades. “I had enough clothes for six children.” Irma continued her resistance work and transported leaflets in the baby carriage. “That was wonderfully unsuspicious” – but perilous.

“Recognize injustice, never again fascism, never again war – this maxim determined my life.” To this day, Irma Schwager turns this maxim into political action. After Austria’s liberation from fascism, she was active, domestically and internationally, in furthering the cooperation of women for equality, development and peace and implementation of the United Nations Women’s Decade goals. Her attention was above all aimed at easing tensions between East and West, ending the Vietnam war and, remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, against rearmament and the nuclear threat. As a contemporary witness she communicates to the young generation the necessity to say “No” early enough and to resist injustice. “It looks as if you put yourself in danger when you are active. But that is not the case. You learn to meet the dangers, you experience solidarity”. (1000peacewomen).

Sorry, there are practically no texts in english in the internet on our peacewomen, Irma Schwager, Austria.

links:

The Schüttehausproject / Schuettehouse project;

The Google download book: Re/reading the Past, By J. R. Martin, Ruth Wodak, 2003,  275 pages;

Make a Difference by Joining Our Magnet Nurse Team, 16 pdf-pages;

Österreichische Freiheitsfront: on fr.wikipedia;

Action N;

Ein wahrer österreichischer Patriot;

Wolfsmutter.com, Abenteuer Feminismus.

Michel Sasseville, a professor with the philosophy faculty at Laval University, has received the 2005 Excellence and Innovation in Instructional Design award from the Canadian Association for Distance Education (CADE) for his course, “L’observation en philosophie pour les enfants.” The online multimedia course has been available to philosophy students since January 2005. The course’s pedagogical approach is based on observing children engaged in philosophical research activities. Students have access to audiovisual material allowing them see and observe the Grades 1, 3 and 6 children, who were filmed in real classroom situations. Throughout the course, students are encouraged to help create a virtual philosophical inquiry and research community … (full text).

Michel Sasseville is a Professor of Philosophy at Laval University in Quebec. He specialises in teaching philosophy to children (on the International School of Geneva – see also their Homepage).

(He is) Ph.D. in Philosophy, Professor at Laval U. (Quebec), Michel Sasseville is responsible for the training programm in philosophy with children, according to Matthew Lipman´s approach. Also guest Professor at Montclair U. (New jersey), he intervenes regularly in the french part of Switzerland, in Czecky and in diverse parts of the world, training professionals in the practice of philosophy with children (on odef.ch).

Professeur à l’Université Laval depuis 1995. Chargé de cours, Université Laval (1982-1995). Président du Conseil international de recherches philosophiques avec les enfants (1997-1999). Professeur invité, Université Iberoamericana, Mexico (1995-1997), Montclair State University, New Jersey (1997-1999), Université du Sud de la Bohème, Ceskè Budejovice, République Tchèque (2003-2004), Institut de formation pédagogique de Genève, Suisse (2003-2004). Collaborateur principal au centre La Traversée, St-Lambert, pour un projet de prévention de la violence et philosophie pour les enfants (depuis 1998). Responsable du développement des programmes de formation en philosophie pour les enfants offerts par la Faculté de philosophie (depuis 1996). Doctorat en philosophie, Université Laval et Montclair State University (1993). Maîtrise en philosophie, Université Laval (1985). B.A. philosophie, Université Laval (1980). (à Uni Laval).

Le rencontrer aussi sur fr.wikipedia.

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Michel Sasseville – Canada

He says: … 3- We have seen a profound reform in Education in Québec since 20 years and now, at primary school, we talk about competencies and transversal competencies among them we find critical judgment. More than that, the ministry of Education of Québec goes up to say that the classroom should be transformed into a community of learners. In this context, P4C is more than welcome because doing philosophy with children means inviting them to become critical thinkers (not only that but also that) within a community of inquiry. This is exactly what people in primary schools are looking for. And here we are with more than 40 years of experience showing how this could be done and the impacts of doing this on the performance of the child in other disciplines. No surprise that people are more and more interested by philosophy for children … (full interview text).

Find him and his publications on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search.

He contributed on Analytic Teaching, Vol. 27, No. 1; and on World Philosophy Day 2008.

Professor Michel Sasseville, then President of ICPIC, presented the following account of “The State of International Cooperation in Philosophy for Children” at a UNESCO meeting in March 1998: The activity of doing philosophy with children is not a new one. In the Middle Age, adolescents were already invited to study logic. Though there is almost a difference of nature between what was done at this time and what we mean today by doing philosophy with children, it remains true that people living in this time were convinced that the study of logic could be very helpful if we want to think in a more proper way. For a variety of reasons, this assumption disappeared with the Renaissance and we had to wait until this century, more precisely in 1969, to see philosophy being used again as a tool to help children to become more critical, creative and caring persons … (full text, 22 September 2004).

He writes: Introduction – In this paper I would like to show how the transformation of traditional classrooms into classrooms of communities of inquiry can bring about not only better thinking on the part of students but also a growth in emotional maturity. The classroom community of inquiry fosters the growth of three kinds of thinking: critical, creative and caring. Although equally important, caring thinking is crucial in making possible the democratic dialogue essential to communal inquiry. It focuses on the building of solidarity and the preservation of values and relationships. It enables the child to deal with the relationship of self to other, learning how one can put one’s ego in perspective in light of the other’s views, interests and concerns. Caring thinking attends to the feelings of students as well as their thinking. It aims at preserving, cherishing and celebrating that which they value and fostering the courage to let go of that which no longer serves the growth of the self  in relation to the other.. It consists in the sharpening of numerous skills of translation involved in the understanding of different world views and the making of new meanings. It relies on communication, translation, empathy, compassion, understanding and dialogue. When it is embedded in communal dialogical inquiry, it constitutes an education of the emotions, a necessary constituent of global intelligence. Caring thinking aims to foster relational consciousness, dialogue, understanding and inquiry while at the same time helping children to tend to the reasonableness of their emotions in given contexts. What is Caring Thinking? … (full long text).

ALLOCUTION ORIGINALE EN VERSION ANGLAISE: The present paper is a transcription of a conference given as part of the Philosophy for Children Un curriculo per impare a pensare, Convegno Internazionale di studio, Padova. The first part of the present paper includes a theoretical presentation of the general context in which the prevention program was elaborated and a second part which describes the clinical research that was carried out during the 2002-2003 school year. Results of this research and a discussion are also presented … // … Taking action to prevent violence requires finding ways to be forearmed, and thus able to protect oneself, while not harming others. We began our program in primary schools because they are the first social institution where children interact outside of their families. From the point of view of preventing violence of which a child could be the victim, witness or author, school has a symbolic meaning as an institution that conveys social rules. Thus we believe that it is the location most conducive to establishing a mechanism for citizenship education. We chose Philosophy for Children because children are budding philosophers. In childhood, we open up to the world with the wonder of discovery. Even when discoveries contradict each other and children do not know what to do, they never stop asking questions about why and how the world works, and this is why philosophy seemed to us to be the natural continuation of children’s questions … (on la traversee).

Invited as experts by Unesco to present what is done in the field of Philosophy for children, we have been asked to propose a certain number of recommendations concerning an eventual Unesco project on Philosophy for Children. At least, that was the title of the agenda. What UNESCO wanted was a kind of picture of what different people coming from different backgrounds have to say concerning the teaching of philosophy, the doing of philosophy with children, the relationship between philosophy and children, the different models that exist concerning this large topic. I think it was really interesting even though in some cases, I felt for example that we were far away from the idea of the community of inquiry as a pedagogical methodology to introduce philosophy to children. But, the point of this meeting was not to buy P4C or to sell it, but to expose to UNESCO what is done in this new field of education and philosophy. And, for this reason, a certain number of people around the table were totally unknown by those who are using the Community of Inquiry to introduce philosophy to children. And, these people, from what I understood, didn’t know too much about this idea too. At the end, we as a group (we were around 15 people) finally proposed five recommendations to the director of the section of Philosophy and Ethics that could combine the different perspectives presented during the two days of the meeting. These five recommendations are: … (full text, Paris, March 1998).

Quelques textes en francais:

• Penser pour et par soi-même, entrevue avec Michel Sasseville par Mélanie Frappier;
• l’éducation du citoyen par Michel Sasseville;
• Christian Bobin, visages de l’enfance … ;
• Penser par et pour soi-même: La philosophie peut-elle être utile à des élèves de l’école primaire … .

En 1999, à la suite d’une rencontre internationale d’experts qu’elle a organisée sur le sujet, l’UNESCO a produit un rapport recommandant l’introduction généralisée de la pratique de la philosophie dès la pré-maternelle (Philosophie pour les enfants).

links:

Philosophy for Children P4c/Interviews (shows same work worldwide – the rest of their website still under construction);

THIRTY YEARS OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN PHILOSOPHY FOR CHILDREN: AN OVERVIEW, by Maughn Gregory, responsible de l’IAPC – all in english;

Les pratiques à visée philosophique, un espace en construction, octobre 2008, (sur le blog: EDUCATION CULTURE PHILOSOPHIE, page personnelle de Caroline Pillet);

2 Interviews with Matthew Lipman: 1) What is P4C really, and 2) The Other aspect of P4C;

Site officiel M. Lipman;

Federation of AustralAsian Philosophy in Schools Associations FAPSA /back issues; (and their homepage);

Site de Gilles Geneviève;

Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children / The World of Philosophy for Children by countries;

children thinking.co.uk;

Club 44 – Centre de culture, d’information et de rencontre, La Chaux-de-Fonds (Suisse): rencontre, et page d’accueil;

Michel Tozzi

Site de l’Université de Laval et de Michel Sasseville (proposant une formation en ligne);

Forum international francophone portant sur la philosophie pour les enfants;

Site des ateliers AGSAS et Jacques Lévine;

Site de l’Association québécoise de philosophie pour enfants et ses contes philosophiques;

Useful links on P4c;

the persian version of the website P4c;

WCP 2008 in Seoul, (WCP of 2009 will be on July in Italy, please ask Pro-Philo – attention: to be disambiguate with PROPHILO, an italian fashion website);

childhood & philosophy, Journal of the International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children ICPIC, edited by the Center of Philosophical Studies in Childhood of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;

Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique INRP;

Livre Google: Philosophie De L’Education, By Lucien Morin, Louis Brunet, 2000, 635 pages.

Sabriye Tenberken (born 1970) is a German socialworker and co-founder of the organisation Braille Without Borders. Biography: Sabriye was born near Bonn, Germany, and she became gradually visually impaired and completely blind by the age of thirteen due to retinal disease. She studied Central Asian Studies at Bonn University. In addition to Mongolian and modern Chinese, she studied modern and classical Tibetan in combination with Sociology and Philosophy … (full text).

Sabriye Tenberken, a German who became blind at the age of 12, established the first school for blind Tibetan children in Lhasa in 1998. She had to overcome numerous obstacles, including official indifference, active hostility, and irregular financial assistance, but today her Rehabilitation and Training Center for the Blind is transforming the lives of a growing number of blind Tibetan youngsters. The achievements of its students are beginning to change traditional Tibetan beliefs that blindness is a punishment for their sins in previous lives.Sabriye Tenberken, a slender, brown-haired woman who does not wear dark glasses to hide her blind eyes, radiates energy and warmth. Totally informal and insatiably curious, she is the kind of person who, after patiently answering all a journalist’s questions, starts asking him about his personal life! She moves about with such confidence that it is hard to believe that she cannot see. And it is this confidence and love for life, along with practical skills, that she wants to infuse in her students … She says: “Blindness is not the end of the world. You can have a wonderful life as a blind person”.  (1000peacewomen).

… Tenberken is a different sort of role model, more accustomed to moving mountains than climbing them. She is close in age to Weihenmayer, and became blind near the same time as he did due to a similar degenerative disease … (full text).

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Sabriye Tenberken – Germany

She works for Braille Without Borders BWB, and for the Tibet Disabled Persons’ Federation.

There were three turning points in the early life of Sabriye Tenberken, a native of Cologne in Germany, who lost her sight when she was just 12 owing to a congenital retinal degenerative disease. The first was when she found out about author Jacques Lusseyran who, despite being visually challenged, worked in the Resistance during the Third Reich. She realised that, whether you are sightless or not, “it is very important to put all your energy in doing something for the underprivileged”. Then, a totally new world opened for her when she learnt Braille: “I suddenly experienced the joy of reading.” And when she learnt to walk with the help of a white cane, Tenberken found that this little tool had opened her world still further and made her independent … (full text).

… In 2004, Paul and Sabriye and a team of their blind students from Lhasa embarked upon the Climbing Blind expedition in Tibet under the leadership of blind Everest mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer. The prize-winning documentary Blindsight about this expedition was released worldwide to cinemas in 2006 … (full text).

… At 26 years old, she decided to travel through remote areas of the Tibetan countryside, where she visited rural villages, spreading the word about her Braille system and helping the blind children there to be able to receive an education. When she decided that the best way to do her mission was on horseback, there were protests from everywhere. But still, she continued her journey with three companions, two of whom were Tibetan, riding from village to village … (full text).

… In addition to teaching blind children how to read with Braille, Tenberken also teaches them how to climb in the Himalayas, and overcome the stigma of their disabilities. In 2006, the award winning film, Blindsight, documented Sabriye and Paul’s expedition with a group of their students to climb Mt. Everest. She and 6 of her blind students joined world class blind mountain climber, Erik Weihenmayer, in an attempt to summit Lhakpa Ri, the 23,000 foot peak which rises spectacularly beside Mount Everest. The resulting 3-week journey is beyond anything any of them could have predicted … (full text).

Find her and her publications on IMDb; on amazon; on Google Video-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search.

You can’t tell that Sabriye Tenberken is blind. She rides horses to crisscross Tibet’s forbidding passes and plateaus. When talking, she looks you straight in the eye and describes things by their colors: the yellow mushrooms or the azure lake. And to greet a visitor, she bounds down a flight of steps in her boarding school for visually impaired children in Tibet’s capital Lhasa. In the playground Tenberken points to 15-year-old Ngudup, who is playing a song for her on his guitar. “For 11 years,” she says, “he was locked up in a dark room” … // … Tenberken’s latest project is a farm some 300 kilometers from Lhasa, where blind adults are taught to raise animals and plant vegetables, and she’s also establishing a center in Kerala, India, where trainees from developing countries can learn to set up similar schools. “There should be no limits for the blind,” says Tenberken—clear proof that you don’t need sight to have vision. (full text).

(On 1000peacewomen): Sabriye was born in Germany in 1970. At the age of two, she started losing her sight. By 12, she could not see anything, and was sent to a special school for the blind in Marburg. “It was the beginning of a new, wonderful life for me,” she says. Not only did she learn Braille and how to move about using a white cane, she learned to ski, ride horses and row in a kayak. “That school,” she says, “infused in me all the confidence I could possibly have.”

While in eighth grade at the Marburg school, Sabriye and her classmates were taken to an exhibition on Tibet, where they were allowed to touch artifacts such as weapons, prayer beads, and wooden sculptures. They also learned a lot about Tibetan history, customs, and religion. Sabriye was captivated by Tibet that day.

After school, she started learning Tibetan at the University of Bonn, the first blind person ever to do so. There was no Braille script for Tibetan, so Sabriye painstakingly developed one. Impressed, one of her professors offered to take it to Tibet and show it to the authorities there. That might get Sabriye an invitation to visit Tibet to present the script herself. Alas, the professor came back with the news that while the authorities were interested in what Sabriye had devised, they did not think that a blind student could successfully demonstrate it!

But by now, Sabriye was determined to go to Tibet and help its blind children, though exactly how she was not too sure. So in May 1997, aged 26, she flew by herself to Beijing. Everybody thought she was crazy – not only was she blind, she had no teaching experience, she did not know anyone in China, let alone Tibet, and she could barely speak Chinese or Tibetan.

Sabriye’s first encounters with Chinese officialdom were disastrous. The China Disabled Persons’ Federation (CDPF) in Beijing told Sabriye that the Federation did not consider Tibet very important and that it did not plan to do anything for that region’s blind for another ten years! And when she requested permission from the authorities to visit a region near eastern Tibet in order to find out how widespread blindness was there, an ophthalmologist assured her that there was not a single blind person in that area! Frustrated at being given the run around, Sabriye flew to Lhasa to think things over.

Within a week of arriving in the Tibetan capital, Sabriye met a young Tibetan woman paramedic named Dolma whose job it was to travel to remote areas of Tibet teaching farmers and nomads the basics of hygiene and preventive medicine. Dolma confirmed that there was a high rate of blindness in Tibet. The main reasons were a deficiency of vitamin A in the diet and exposure to strong ultraviolet rays because of the region’s high altitude. According to an estimate by the American charity, the Seva Foundation, of the 2.5 million people in Tibet around 30,000 were blind.

Anxious to find out things for herself, Sabriye decided to tour a district about a hundred miles from Lhasa. She could have traveled comfortably in an all-terrain jeep, but she decided to go on horseback since jeeps could not reach very remote villages. Accompanied by Dolma and another woman friend, Sabriye visited village after village, braving storms, wading through waist-deep water and spending nights in smelly huts filled with rats and other vermin. Often, she was horrified by the plight of the blind children she met – in one village, a skin-and-bones four-year-old did not know how to walk because whenever her family went out of the house, they tied her to the bed. However, not all blind children had been reduced to such misery. Sabriye also met several who were in good health and were even enthusiastic at the idea of going to a school.

Soon after Sabriye returned to Lhasa, the head of an orphanage in the capital offered her space in his institution to run a school for the blind. Sabriye was scarcely able to believe her luck. Now she could go back to Germany and raise the money. Within six months Sabriye had the funds. And when she flew back to Lhasa, she was accompanied by Paul Kronenberg, a young Dutchman whom she had got to know in Tibet and who wanted to work with her. Paul, a tall, blond engineer and computer whiz, had worked with handicapped people in Tibet.

The Center opened in mid-1998 with six children. Today, it hosts 30 children between four and 21. A whole range of skills are taught, from moving around with a cane, cooking, and hygiene to Chinese, Tibetan and English Braille. The Center also offers older children professional training in Chinese medical massage therapy and music. Recently Sabriye and Paul started a vocational training farm for blind people in Shigatse, a small city about 270 kilometers west of Lhasa. The farm will train nomads and farmers who became blind at a later age as well as young adults in agriculture, animal husbandry or cheese production. Adventurous excursions are also a staple. A year ago, six of the Center’s older students went on a trek at 7000 meters in the snowbound Himalayas!

As they gain confidence in the warm, supportive atmosphere of the Center, the children start to blossom. “Most kids do not like to go home the first year,” Sabriye says. Indeed, after a few months at the center, one child said, “I do not know why my parents called me a witch. But I know that they had no right to.”

However, the last seven years have not been easy. Within a few months of starting, they were evicted from the orphanage after Paul discovered that its director was stealing the Center’s funds. Luckily, they found new premises immediately. That winter, Paul contracted such severe pneumonia that he nearly died. Money became so short that Sabriye had to put her entire personal savings of 40,000 marks into the project. And to cut costs, for three and a half years, Sabriye and Paul lived in a tiny room in a Tibetan inn, with the toilet nearly 60 meters away. At times, they felt like giving up. “It was quite a struggle,” Sabriye says. “I would not want to do it again.”

Although the Center now has the support of the Chinese and Tibetan authorities and has been featured in newspapers and television programs around the world, financing continues to be a worry. Every year, Paul and Sabriye spend three months in Europe raising money for Blind Without Borders (BWB), as their organization is now called. They do not need much: their budget last year was only $26,000. Says Mark Giffard-Lindsay, an Englishman who runs an anti-poverty program in Tibet. “Sabriye and Paul have a fraction of the budgets of other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) here, and ten times the commitment.”

Sabriye, who is now 35, received the Norgall Prize of the International Women’s Club in 2000. She was named by the World Economic Forum as one of the “Leaders of Tomorrow” and as one of its 2004 Heroes, by Time Magazine.
The next big project of BWB is to start an institute in Kerala, South India, at which gifted blind people from all over the developing world can learn management skills that will help them start projects for the blind in their own countries. It will not be easy setting up this ambitious venture, but Sabriye is not dismayed. After all, who would have thought she would be successful in establishing the Training Center in Lhasa?

Although Sabriye’s work does not contribute directly to peace, it certainly does so indirectly, in the tradition of Unicef, which has won the Nobel Peace Prize. By offering hope and fulfillment to a neglected minority, Sabriye has contributed to making Tibet a more just society and furthered the cause of peace. And in the years to come, she will do this in much of the Third World.

Does Sabriye ever regret having left comfortable Germany for the hardships of Tibet? She shakes her head. “What I have always wanted to do,” she says, “is to make a positive difference in the lives of people. That I have been able to do. Even if I died now, I would think that I made the best out of my life. This makes me content, deeply” … (1000peacewomen).

links:

Braille Without Borders BWB, the right to be blind without being disabled (Homepages in german and in netherlands …  (the  Homepages in english, francais and espanol are under construction), and on wikipedia;

International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs IISE;

Blindsight – The Film;

Do we control our brains or do our brains control us? Oliver Sacks, the author and neurologist, describes how the experiences of blind people provide a fascinating insight into the nature of consciousness;

Categories on wikipedia: International nongovernmental organizations NGOs; Braille; Blindness organizations; Schools for the blind; Without Borders organisations.

… Caine, who has recorded 16 albums, is celebrated for his eclectic and inventive interpretations of the classical repertoire. His 1997 jazz tribute to Gustav Mahler received an award from the German Mahler Society, while outraging some jury members. Caine has also reworked Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, as well as Wagner and Mozart. (full text).

His bio also on his own website.

He says: … URI: Well, my attitude at Penn was … I heard professors say the most ignorant things about jazz, as if it were a waste of time, and my thing was, “As long as I’m doing your thing, don’t ever tell me not to do the other! And by the way, I never see you guys come up to 46th and Walnut to the jazz places. They’re three blocks from your school, and you won’t set foot in these places where the most amazing music is being played! So don’t tell me that!” And I guess they said, “OK! OK!” I had my problems at Penn, and felt very alienated by the time I completed the program. But the van Pelt Libarary at Penn is a tremendous library: they had so much music. One of the tests the department gave at the end of the year was a brutal one in which you had to identify any piece of music from 1500 to the present. Most students spent half a semester just to study all this music. I would just take out hundreds of recordings, and 8-10 hours per day, put on 30 seconds of each piece so I could recognize it. I did this for about five months, and something happened musically for me … (full 4-page interview text, ).

His website.

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Uri Caine – USA

Watch these videos:

• Uri Caine – live in Paris, 11.40 min, Dec 13, 2008;
• Uri Caine – Gustav Mahler: Detaching from the World, 04.57 min, Apr 18, 2008;
• Uri Caine – Rhodes Solo (2007), 02.39 min, Aug 18, 2007;
• uri caine bedrock, 00.53 min, Jul 22, 2006;
• I suoni delle Dolomiti, 3.42 min;
• Composer Portrait: Uri Caine, 02.59 min, Jan 25, 2008.

In 2001, pianist Uri Caine, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Ahmir Thompson – three Philly jazz and hip-hop musicians – recorded a soulful stellar album, The Philadelphia Experiment, for the Ropeadope label of music old and newly original and inspired by our region … // … Their brand of blasted-out punk-funky jazz could put the “meat” in meatballs, especially with guitarist Nick Bockrath in on the fun. And this month, special guests from Philly’s Paul Green School of Rock All-Stars pay a musical tribute to South Philly including music from Rocky. Get there early for the snacks provided by DiBruno Brothers. Mangia. (full text, Feb. 20, 2009).

Upcoming concerts.

… Caine seeks grandiloquent melodrama one moment, komic kapering vaudeville the next. He preserves the pomp, but also sets off the pearl necklace detonators at the soiree. His vocalists arrive from diverse zones: Bunny Sigler (Philly soul on the Met stage), Dhafer Youssef (taking Moorish flight), Sadiq Bey (rap-poetic toughness), Josefine Lindstrand (ethereal balladry), Marco Paolini (Italian theatricality) and Julie Patton (cooled narration). Musicians include Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Zach Danziger (drums), Joyce Hammann (violin), Nguyen Le (guitar), Tim Lefebvre (bass), Stefano Bassanese and Bruno Fabrizio Sorba (electronics), although several more are on-hand for guest appearances … (full text, February 16, 2009).

… Caine’s Wagner extrapolations are more modest in scope. The inspiration for the project came from a passage in Wagner’s diaries in which he records hearing his overtures after a meal at the Quadri, a café in the Piazza San Marco then frequented by Austrians. Producer Stephan Winter asked Caine to arrange Wagner’s music for an ensemble similar to the one Wagner might have heard, and they recorded the music live in the very same environs. Caine’s string-quartet/accordion/piano arrangements of familiar Wagner opera passages capture the flavor of the originals. And the recording includes ambient sounds, such as the bells of San Marco ringing out at the end of the Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and the mundane sounds of café traffic, which add poignancy to the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde … (full text, OCTOBER 12, 1998).

Violinist Feldman, bassist Cohen, pianist Caine and drummer Baron have been involved on a number of Tzadik projects throughout the years, and this is another genuinely enjoyable one. Touching on the gentle chamber jazz swing of projects like the Masada String Trio and BarKokhba, the music improvises on music with a Middle Eastern feel, led by Feldman’s violin which achieves a sweet aching and longing on several of the tracks here. Caine’s acoustic piano isn’t often featured, but here he gets a bit of space and uses it to excellent effect, with some swinging and thoughtful improvisations and solid support for the other musicians … (full text, February 05, 2009).

Find him and his publications on iLike; on amazon; on his website/discography; on Google Video-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search.

Players as acclaimed as Uri Caine speak highly of their fellow Philadelphian, pianist Sumi Tonooka, who deserves a far wider hearing but works at her own pace. Long Ago Today, her first leader date in 10 years and her fifth since 1990, is accurately titled in the sense that it was recorded back in 2004. Sadly, drummer Bob Braye died in the interim. But thanks in no small part to him, the music from this trio session pulses with life. Bassist Rufus Reid, Tonooka’s longtime musical associate and by far the best known of the three, completes the lineup. Tonooka made a gripping appearance on Reid’s Live at the Kennedy Center, a 2007 CD/DVD package from Motema. Her firm attack and lush, off-centered harmonic palette had much to do with the Reid quintet’s appeal and the same qualities permeate her trio music … (full text).

Die 27. Ausgabe des traditionsreichen norditalienischen Festivals wird dieses Jahr nicht mehr Anfang Juni, sondern vom 26. Juni bis 5. Juli stattfinden. Die neue kulturtouristische Ausrichtung vertrug sich nicht mit den Wetterkapriolen im Frühsommer – schließlich finden viele Konzerte „am Berg“, an öffentlichen Plätzen oder in Weinhöfen statt. An der Dauer des Festivals, der Zahl der mitwirkenden Musiker und der hohen Qualität des Gebotenen wird sich aber nichts ändern … // … Stand 2008 die Gitarre im Zentrum des Geschehens, so geht es dieses Jahr in Bozen ums Klavier: neben Bollani in verschiedenen Formationen gastiert Uri Caine im Rahmen von „Jazz and Wine“ mit einem Soloprogramm auf den Kränzelhof in Tscherms und der junge italienische Pianist Alessandro Lanzoni spielt in der Serie „Jazz in the Mountains“ mit seinem Trio auf dem Messnerhof. Im Stadtheater konzertiert Brad Mehldau, der sich ähnlich wie Bollani auf klassische Anschlagskultur bezieht, aber doch für ein ganz anderes pianistisches Konzept steht. Ebenfalls im Theater zu Gast sind Paolo Fresu, Uri Caine und das Alborana String Quartet – auch hier begegnen sich Klassik und Jazz auf unkonventionelle Weise … (full text, ‎Feb 9, 2009‎ … siehe auch 27. Südtirol Jazzfestival Bozen).

links:

Loose Roots, Korean American Drum Troupe;

Artistic theory, practice converge in Artspeaks fellows’ appearances, February 5, 2009;

Are all Grammy awards created equal? Cdns nominated in obscure categories, Feb 5, 2009;

Jazz Police;

Christian McBride, Pat Martino, with The Philadelphia Experiment (album);

Questlove alias Ahmir Khalib Thompson, and The Roots;

All about Jazz.com;

BBC/music/help/radio;

Categories on wikipedia: Avant-garde jazz musicians; American jazz pianists; Jewish American musicians; Philadelphia musicians.

Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Abdallah is the Medical Treatment Director of the Amel Center for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture  in Sudan, a leading Sudanese Darfuri-led human rights organization. Despite being surrounded by the on-going brutal conflict in Darfur, Dr. Ahmed has been steadfast in his efforts to rectify the region’s human rights crisis through serving victims of torture and providing leadership in the movement for peace. Dr. Ahmed is renowned for creating a network of health professionals in Darfur to provide quality care to the victims of violence and to ensure the human rights of all Darfuri people. Dr. Ahmed has represented the Fur tribe, the majority ethnic group in Darfur, in national and international forums and negotiations for peace in Sudan … and: (he is the) Medical Director (of the) Amel Center for Rehabilitation of Torture Victims, Nyala, Darfur … and: In addition to his medical work with Amel Center in Nyala and El Fasher, Dr. Mohammed Ahmed has participated actively in the “human rights movement” in Sudan during the period 1998 -2007 also taking various courses in human rights, including the training series on international standards for documentation of torture in 2005 and 2006 organized by Physicians for Human Rights and Redress together with Amel Center, Khartoum. The most recent training occurred in July 2006 at Nyala Farmers Hall (Dr. Mohammed’s remarks from this training program on torture in the context of Darfur are found on PHR’s website under the Darfur Survival Campaign in Susannah Sirkin’s “blog” from Darfur. As a leading voice and advocate for his victimized people, Dr. Mohammed Ahmed was a member of a delegation that met US Special Representative Robert Zoellick at the Kalma camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in 2005 where he raised a variety of human rights and health issues. He has actively participated as a leader in addressing major community problems in his native region of Darfur …

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Mohammed Ahmed Abdallah – Soudan

… and: Dr. Mohammed works every day as a physician. His work as a community leader and rights advocate are a complement to his core commitment to use his professional skills to benefit victims of violence and human rights abuse … Since the war started in Darfur in 2002-2003, Dr. Mohammed and his colleagues have been deeply involved in treating survivors of torture and rape through their work in Nyala Hospital. As conditions continued to deteriorate and violence persisted, with massive displacement and large numbers of IDPs settling in camps outside the major towns of Darfur, Dr. Mohammed was inspired to join Amel Center and started professional work there in 2004. In Darfur, Amel Center’s mandate is documentation of torture, sexual violence and other crimes, provision of medical and psychological treatment of survivors, and legal aid with protection. As Dr. Mohammed wrote to us: “Right now, Darfur is a big prison for the IDPs and those living in towns. For the last seven years, Darfur has been under marshal laws which enable anybody to be arrested, tortured, or even killed. In July 2006 the Amel Center’s coordinater, Massad Ali was arrested for two weeks. The Center’s legal aid coordinator was harassed and tortured by the security forces, making the work environment for Amel one of constant intimidation and risk. In spite of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the North and South of Sudan, and in spite of commitments made by the Government when it signed the Darfur Peace Agreement in 2006, there is no rule of law and arbitrary detentions, especially of those opposed to the Agreement itself, continue”. In late 2006 and early 2007, conditions have worsened will many non-governmental organizations pulling out due to the unfavorable security conditions … (full long bio on The George Washington University, Medical Center, (by Susannah Sirkin, Deputy Director of Physicians for Human Rights,  October 2007).

… Dr. Ahmed is also a respected community leader, peace negotiator and human rights advocate. He represents the voice of indigenous leadership that is not heard from in reporting on Darfur … (full text, 14 November 07).

Listen to actual chat audio on selected questions: Erin: Welcome to T2A for November 15th. We’re meeting Darfur rights activist Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Abdalla. He is medical treatment director for Darfur’s leading indigenous human rights organization. The Amel Center for the Treatment & Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture works in Nyala, al-Fashir and the surrounding encampments of internally displaced people. Dr. Mohammed Ahmed is the 2007 recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Human Rights Award being presented in Washington Friday … (full text with different mp3- and Real-audios, 14 November 07).

Dr Abdallah said: “In the hospital, we are seeing more cases of malnutrition and infectious diseases we have not seen in a long time, such as polio, measles and tuberculosis. In addition to killing, [government forces] are using violence or the threat of violence to force others to leave the camps. In the last two weeks, at a camp near Nyala, soldiers and police carrying sticks and rubber hoses threatened IDPs, while tents were destroyed and property was carried away in trucks. Approximately 1,000 IDPs were forced onto trucks at gunpoint and were dumped in the outskirts of the city.” Dr Abdallah told the audience that immediately before leaving for Washington D.C. he had met with the leaders of 27 tribal groups: “Today, I speak on their behalf. I also speak on behalf of my patients – 14-year-old girls who have been gang raped in front of their families, men and boys thrown into the fire that also burned their villages and all their possessions, prisoners who have spoken out against the government and paid for it with awful torture and mutilation of their bodies […] We need the immediate protection of civilians before peace talks can take place” … (full text IRCT, 23. Nov 2007).

Doctor Warns of Darfur Camp Expulsions … WASHINGTON (AP) – A prominent doctor who treats displaced people in Darfur says the Sudanese government is risking the deaths of hundreds of thousands by forcing people out of the camps where they receive humanitarian aid. Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Abdallah, who runs a human rights group in south Darfur’s capital, Nyala, said he has seen evidence backing a recent U.N. claim that the government was chasing people out of nearby camps … (full text, 11/12/2007).

… Recently awarded for his commitment to human rights, 54 year-old Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Abdallah is a respected community leader, peace negotiator and human rights advocate who battles adversity to protect torture survivors and seek sustainable peace in Darfur. Based in Darfur, Dr. Abdallah is a physician and medical treatment director at the Amel Center for the Treatment & Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture, Darfurs leading indigenous human rights organization.The Amel Center operates as an independent entity that offers services and support to survivors of torture and sexual violence while documenting violence and human rights abuses, torture and rape. When asked about the future of Darfur at the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award Ceremony, his plea was simple: to provide equipment to UNAMID, the UN-AU joint hybrid peacekeeping force for Darfur. Otherwise, if the international community does nothing to provide the equipment, “the result will be absolute disaster, we will have another Rwanda” … (full text).

On 9 September 2006 at 12.15pm Mohamed Badawi Mohamed Badawi, human rights lawyer and coordinator of the Amel Centre for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture in el Fashir was summoned to the office of the National Security in el Fashir. Mr. Badawi immediately reported to the Security Offices and remained there until 3.30pm when he was released without charge. Mr. Badawi was not interrogated but was ordered to report again to the offices the following day, 10 September 2006 at 9.15am. Mr. Badawi reported to the National Security Offices in el Fashir at 9.15am on 10 September 2006 where he was held until 3pm. He was interrogated by Security Officers about the activities of the Amel Centre, the relationship between the Amel Centre and international organisations and the relationship between the Amel Centre and the Communist Party. He was released without charge. Background: SOAT’s partner organisation in Sudan, the Amel Centre for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture has offices in Khartoum, Nyala and el Fashir. The Amel Centre provides legal aid to victims of torture and sexual violence and represents individuals at risk of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments including the death penalty and amputations … (full text).

… In an effort to provide relevant, clear information on the devastating situation in Darfur and empower concerned individuals to act effectively to end the on-going genocide, twenty-year-old feature film director Danny Mendoza has assembled a team of volunteers to launch and run a multi-faceted campaign for activism and social justice.  The independently financed documentary, “Familiar Voices” is at the heart of a multi-media campaign that aims to empower its audience so that they may engage in effective social and political action. This galvanizing film is built on the contributions of activists, experts, and concerned citizens from a wide variety of backgrounds, including:  actress and UNICEF ambassador Mia Farrow; professor and Sudan activist Eric Reeves; Nobel Peace Prize winners Jody Williams and Elie Wiesel; Senator Romeo Dallaire of Canada; RFK Humanitarian Award recipient Dr. Mohammad Ahmed Abdallah; Congressman Jim McGovern; interfaith activist Ruth Messinger; and a variety of individuals whose first-hand experience offer a clear and moving portrait of the crisis … (full text).

… If Darfur’s displaced persons camps are dispersed and the population is forced to flee into the bush, the consequences could be devastating, experts warn. “If these people are expelled from the IDP camps, they are going to die — either by starvation, dehydration, or malnutrition,” said Ahmed at a press conference here on Monday. “And the other thing is that the janjaweed will be waiting.” Reports from the ground in Darfur are limited, but some have described a security situation that is very poor, and deteriorating. Travelers by road in Darfur face dozens of checkpoints and demands for bribes, some sponsored by the government and many that are not, Ahmed said, and U.N. aid groups are “handicapped” by looting of their trucks and supplies. Furthermore, many of the estimated 200 to 300 displaced persons camps in Darfur are located in extremely rural areas, some accessible only by helicopter — making it difficult for humanitarian workers to reach the vulnerable populations should they be expelled from camps … (full text).

links:

List of International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims members;

United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women – African Women and Information and Communication Technologies ICTs, 7 pdf-pages;

Learn about Gender issues, The role of women in development and why gender equality matters: GENDER-GUIDE;

FEMNET: Statement for the General Debate at the World Summit on the Information Society WSIS;

The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (Nairobi, Kenya): also on SOUL BEAT AFRICA, on Sociolongo’s Africa, on theFreeLibrary, on ArabInfoMall, on acquireContent, on changemakeers;

Solidarity for African Women’s Rights SOAWR;

The Edler’s Darfur Mission to Sudan, and The Elders:

Striving for the fundamental human rights of civilians in Darfur.

Sotigui Kouyaté (born c. 1936) is one of the first Burkinabé actors. He is the father of film director Dani Kouyaté and is a member of the Mandinka ethnic group. Kouyatés have served as griots for the Keita clan since the 13th century. The Kouyatés guard customs, and their knowledge is authoritative amongst Mandinkas. Keitas have to provide amenities to Kouyatés, who in turn should not hesitate to ask for Keita help. The word Kouyaté translates as “there is a secret between you and me”. Sotigui Kouyaté was born in Mali to Gambian parents and is Burkinabé by adoption. When he was a child, he enjoyed koteba performances. He once played on the Burkina Faso national football team. Kouyaté began his theatre career in 1966, when he appeared as adviser to the king in a historical play produced by his friend Boubacar Dicko. That year, he founded a theatre company in 1966 with 25 people and soon wrote his first play, The Crocodile’s Lament … // … In 2009, Kouyaté won a Silver Bear at the Berlinale Filmfestival for his acting. He played the male main character in Rachid Bouchareb’s drama London River on the 2005 London bombings … (full text, last modified on 22 February 2009).

… As government funding has dried up, Dani Kouyaté and other film-makers have become increasingly dependent on the West – particularly France – for cash. About 80% of the money for films in Burkina now comes from Europe. Kouyaté himself, the son of one of the first ever Burkinabé actors, Sotigui Kouyaté, spent five years at the Sorbonne after studying film in Burkina Faso. (full text).

He says: Let’s be modest. Africa is vast, and it would be pretentious to speak in its name. I’m fighting the battle with words because I’m a storyteller, a griot. Rightly or wrongly, they call us masters of the spoken word. Our duty is to encourage the West to appreciate Africa more. It’s also true that many Africans don’t really know their own continent. And if you forget your culture, you lose sight of yourself. It is said that “the day you no longer know where you’re going, just remember where you came from.” Our strength lies in our culture. Everything I do as a storyteller, a griot, stems from this rooting and openness … (more on wikipedia).

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Sotigui Kouyaté – Mali and Burkina Faso

… This past is again present in three new French-language plays at his Paris home, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. The main work, “Tierno Bokar,” the name of a Sufi mystic caught in an Islamic dispute in French-ruled Africa, has echoes of Mr. Brook’s African epic, “The Conference of Birds.” “The Death of Krishna” is taken from Mr. Brook’s Indian saga, “The Mahabharata.” “The Grand Inquisitor,” based on Dostoyevsky, also addresses questions of religion and power … Yoshi Oida, Habib Dembele, Sotigui Kouyaté and Bruce Meyers in “Tierno Bokar,” one of three new Peter Brook works about religion now at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris … (full text, November 29, 2004).

… Sotigui Kouyate taking the award for best actor. It was a good decision, as it was only Kouyate’s performance that lifted an otherwise dull and predictable film that avoided any meaningful discussion about the effect of the terrorist attack around which the story was shaped … (full text).

Multinational Forces at the Berlin Film Festival.

… At the same time in France, the elderly African father Ousmane also sets out for London in search of his missing son. The tall, austere Ousmane (played with great dignity by Sotigui Kouyate) works as a forester in France and is a practising Muslim with long dreadlocks … (full text).

BERLIN, Feb. 14 2009 (Xinhua) – Actor Sotigui Kouyate from “London River” won the silver bear for the Best Actor on the 59th International Film Festival Berlin (Berlinale) on Saturday …

Le Malien Sotigui Kouyaté, 72 ans, a gagné l’Ours d’argent du meilleur acteur dans “London river” du Franco-Algérien Rachid Bouchareb, samedi soir à la Berlinale … (full text, Feb 14, 2009).

… He plays a French Muslim desperately awaiting news of his son after the 2005 terrorist attacks in London …

GERMANY-FILM-BERLINALE-AWARDS: Actor Sotigui Kouyate of Mali poses during a press conference after winning the Silver Bear award for best actor following the awards ceremony of the 59th International Berlinale Film Festival in Berlin on February 14, 2009. Sotigui Kouyate won the award for his role in “London River” by Franco-Algerian director Rachid Bouchareb as a father looking for his son after the July 2005 attacks in the British capital … (full text, Feb 14, 2009).

Find him and his publications, movies, videos, pictures: on this, and on that zimbio page; on yahoo movies /filmography; on IMDb; on Google Video-search; on Google Images-search; on Google News-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search.

SIA: THE MYTH OF THE PYTHON (2001, Burkina Faso, 96 min.), directed by Dani Kouyaté; screenplay by Kouyaté, loosely adapted from the play The Legend of Wagadu Seen by Sia Yatabéré by Moussa Diagana; cinematography by Robert Millié; sound by Pierre Lorrain; edited by Zoë Durouchoux; music by Daniel Rousseau and Fantani Toure; with Sotigui Kouyaté (Watigué the General), Habib Dembelé (Balla the Griot), Hamadoun Kossoqué (Kerfa the Madman), Fatoumata Diawara (Sia), Ibrahim Baba Cissé (Mamadi), Kardiqué Lolco Traoré (the Emperor, Kaya Maghan), Fily Traoré (Kététigui), Mariétou Kouyaté (the Empress). In Bambara with English subtitles … (full text).

Genesis: … Il restait à faire des liaisons en filmant Sotigui Kouyaté dans un décor indéfini qui pourrait ressembler à une case faite en terre. Nous avons tourné au studio Eclair pendant deux semaines pour une durée de 7 à 8 minutes. Travail très précis et rigoureux pour des metteurs en scène très exigeants et très agréables. En fait, des conditions de tournage idéales. Nous avions le temps de travailler calmement et dans la bonne humeur. Pour eux ce petit tournage était vraiment un tout petit court métrage, ils ont tourné plus de deux ans et sur plusieurs continents. (full text, octobre 2004).

He says also: … I love dance and in 1966, I finally agreed to be in a historical play produced by my friend Boubacar Dicko which featured a war dance. He also asked me to play a part as adviser to the king. The play won a prize and went on tour in the region. I became attached to the show, and then to another, based on a play written by my uncle. Gradually, acting grew on me. But I wasn’t enamoured by everything–not the courses run by French instructors, for example. They told us, without explaining why, how we should walk on stage, which seemed far too affected to me. They would ask us to imagine a ship, to picture it on the wall, but I couldn’t see anything. I left, though by then, I’d really become taken with the profession. I set up my own theatre company in 1966 with a group of 25 people. Burkinabé radio gave us a place to work and we mainly did improvisations. I’d go to work at the ministry for labour and public administration in the morning, play football in the afternoon, and then go off to theatre rehearsals. At the same time, I was also writing my first play, The Crocodile’s Lament. It was about being sensitive, a gift with which you can even manage to caress a crocodile, as it actually happens in several regions of Burkina Faso, where crocodiles are viewed as sacred … (full interview text).

links:

London tale and Iran tragedy lead Berlin film charge, Feb 13, 2009;

The Milk of Sorrow wins at Berlin festival, Feb 14, 2009;

Korean films leave their mark in Berlin, Action comedy “Chaw,” directed by Shin Jung-won, was sold to 10 countries;

How to make great movies on a shoestring;

At uneven Berlin film festival, notions of globalism abound;

Révéler le corps, photographies d’Antoine Tempé;

vent d’Afrique;

Categories on wikipedia: Burkinabe actors; Cinema of Burkina Faso; Burkinabé people by occupation; Actors by nationality; Burkinabé sportspeople; Football (soccer) players by nationality; Football in Burkina Faso; Burkinabe footballers.

Fatma Hamisi Misango was born in 1961 in the poor and neglected Songea District in south western Tanzania. She is a district counsellor and coordinator of a legal aid program in the district. She is engaged in governance issues, legal aid to women and children, particularly those orphaned by HIV/Aids, income generation and political participation. As a result of her work, women’s participation in the civil society in Songea has increased, and they have started their own initiatives to help widows of HIV/Aids.

Educated to secondary school level, she has built formal and informal networks. She belongs to the Sahiba Sisters Foundation, a network of Muslim women engaged in development. Other affiliations are the Tanzania Gender Network, the Intermediary Gender Network and Songea Counsellors and Women in Enterprise. “She values people’s support and has made extensive networks with religious and community leaders and local government officials,” says a colleague who knows her well … (1000peacewomen 1/2).

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Sorry, no photo found for Fatma Hamisi Misango, Tanzania

She works for the Songea District Council, and for the Songea Legal Aid Program SOPLU (both have not an own website).

(1000peacewomen 2/2): … Songea District in the South-West is one of the least developed, poorest areas in Tanzania. Its lremoteness makes it invisible in national development priorities, so there is low investment and minimal presence of international donors in this region. But its location on the borders to Malawi and Zambia offers countless opportunities for women and youth in cross-border trading, agriculture and development linkages.

As a result of Fatma Misango’s work, the participation of women in the civil society has increased. The women have begun initiatives to help widows of HIV/Aids and a legal aid scheme. “Fatma knows how to involve others in development activities,” says the colleague. “She has been instrumental in networking in seven community groups and promotes the inclusion of more women in training.”

Fatma Misango addresses culture and religion issues, often contradicting religious leaders who feel that she wants to question religious authorities. Perhaps her greatest challenge is motivating women in believing they can improve their lives. They face many problems as a result of oppressive laws and customs, as well as discrimination and hunger. She wants to make a difference in women’s lives, to improve their lives. This is her driving force. Fatma’s driving force is to make a difference in women’s lives. (On 1000peacewomen).

Sorry, no other texts found in the internet for Fatma Hamisi Misango, Tanzania.

links:

Open University of Tanzania OUT;

Regional Commisioner’s Office Ruvuma;

Ntimbanjayo Millinga.

Pinar Ilkkaracan is the Founding President of Women for Women’s Human Rights, a leading women’s advocacy organization in Turkey; and co-founder of The Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies, an international network of NGOs and academicians working towards promotion sexual and bodily rights in the Middle East/ North Africa and South/Southeast Asia. She has participated in various UN meetings and conferences on women’s human rights both as a member of the Turkish delegation and NGO representative … (full text).

… Ms. Ilkkaracan has authored numerous articles on violence against women, women in Muslim societies, women in Turkey, and women and sexuality. She edited the book, Women and Sexuality in Muslim Societies and co-authored a human rights manual, Human Rights and Legal Literacy Training Manual, which is used in community centers throughout Turkey to raise awareness of women’s reproductive rights. She is also a member of the Global Fund for Women’s Advisory Council, the International Advisory Committee of BRIDGE at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and the Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health and Ethics. (full text).

She says: “The whole of Europe is focusing on honour crimes and we keep saying … honour crimes are the tip of the iceberg,” said Pinar Ilkkaracan, founder of Women for Women’s Human Rights.”We want quotas (for election candidates) … Fifty percent of the population are women and we’re asking for only 30 percent quotas, which is nothing”. (on Street News Service.org).

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Pinar Ilkkaracan – Turkey

She is founder of Women for Women’s Human Rights WWHR, and founder of Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies CSBR (named on Sexuality Studies.net), (both showed on zoom.info).

Starting with spearheading legal reforms for full equality of women in her own country, psychotherapist and activist Pinar Ilkkaracan expanded her advocacy to networking in Muslim societies and promotion of women’s human rights at the United Nations level. Her organization, Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways (WWHR) pioneered reforms to anchor women’s full equality in the legal system and launched the most widespread human rights training program for women in Turkey. Her international coalition of 38 organizations from 14 countries, the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Countries (CSBR), promotes sexual and reproductive health and rights as human rights. The coalition works to transform and eliminate customary practices and discriminatory attitudes leading to human rights violations … (full text).

… Pinar Ilkkaracan has voiced the issue of women’s sexuality in Muslim societies through the first ever compilation on the issue, and connected groups working on sexual rights in Muslim countries to create the first solidarity network in the field. At the UN level, she has successfully lobbied for advancements on contentious issues such as honor crimes, forced marriages and the rights of the girl child. She is also a prominent researcher and scholar who has published extensively on a wide array of issues including sexuality, violence, migration, and human rights education. What makes Pinar Ilkkaracan’s work unique and noteworthy is her ability to link local, national and international contexts, capacity to combine activism and professionalism and ability to employ a holistic proactive approach using diverse methods. (full text, 2007).

Find her and her publications on zoom.info; on pipl; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search.

… The human rights training program she developed with WWHR, remains to be the most sustainable and widespread women’s human rights education program in the world. Pinar Ilkkaracan has led numerous successful advocacy initiatives in Turkey including the protection order law against domestic violence and the penal code reform to safeguard women’s sexual rights and effectively criminalize sexual violence. Pinar Ilkkaracan has voiced the issue of women’s sexuality in Muslim societies through the first ever compilation on the issue, and connected groups working on sexual rights in Muslim countries to create the first solidarity network in the field … (full text).

psikoterapist, araştırmacı ve insan hakları savunucusudur. Kadının İnsan Hakları – Yeni Çözümler Derneği’nin kurucu başkanı olan Pınar İlkkaracan, aynı zamanda Ortadoğu, Kuzey Afrika, Güney ve Güneydoğu Asya’daki önde gelen sivil toplum kuruluşları  ve akademisyenlerden oluşan Müslüman Toplumlarda Cinsel ve Bedensel Haklar Dayanışma Ağı’nın da kurucusudur. Sıcak Yuva Masalı: Aile İçi Şiddet ve Cinsel Taciz (1996), Müslüman Toplumlarda Kadın ve Cinsellik (2000), ve Orta Doğu’da Cinselliğin Çözümlenmesi (2008) gibi eserleri bulunmaktadır. Birleşmiş Milletler (BM) Kadının Statüsü oturumlarında Türkiye resmi delegasyonunda bir çok kere yer almış olan Pınar İlkkaracan, 2007 yılında Peter-Patricia Gruber Uluslararası Kadın Hakları’nı almıştır. (On AntiHomoFobi).

excerpts of some of 34 online sources for Pinar Ilkkaracan on zoom.info:

• … Ilkkaracan supports the lifting of restrictions on Islamic head scarves at universities, which awaits the president’s approval.But she said talk among government officials of morality, as well as the Islamic code of conduct known by the Arabic term “adab,” could threaten freedom.
• … She has built a regional network to increase the knowledge, solidarity, and advocacy on bodily integrity and human rights among women and men in Muslim societies.She is also a leading advocate for women’s human rights internationally.
• New York, NY – Jul 18, 2007 (PRN): The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation today announces that Pinar Ilkkaracan of Istanbul, Turkey, and two organizations she helped establish, will receive its 2007 Gruber Women’s Rights Prize.Ms. Ilkkaracan, Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways (WWHR) and the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR) will share the unrestricted $500,000 (US) award.The Prize will be presented October 16, 2007, at a ceremony at the New York University School of Law …
• Within a political environment not normally cited for advances in the status of women and their equal protection under law, Ms. Ilkkaracan has broken new ground in helping to effect radical and extensive reforms of Turkish law to bring equality to women in many areas. Through WWHR and CSBR – organizations she helped found – Ms. Ilkkaracan has played an important role in training Turkish women in legal literacy and helping to reform civil and penal codes to advance women’s rights in Turkey and internationally. The work of Ilkkaracan and the two organizations, with which she shares the Gruber Women’s Rights Prize, has brought about significant, tangible improvement in the day-to-day treatment of women under Turkish law. Pinar Ilkkaracan, head of an advocacy group called Women for Women’s Human Rights, said activists fought successfully to keep references to “morality” out of the new laws, arguing that the term is often linked to sexuality and religious values at the expense of women’s rights
• … (etc. etc. – excerpts of some of 34 online sources for Pinar Ilkkaracan on zoom.info).

She writes:

• … When do you think women and girls were finally deemed to have “human rights” by the world’s nations? The obvious answer might be 1948, when the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; or perhaps the 1970s, when the global feminist movement started changing the world? Well, it might come as a surprise to many – including younger generations of women in the global north, many of whom perceive feminism to be an outdated ideology – that it was only in the early 1990s that the United Nations finally recognised that women and girls also have human rights. If you consider this a bit late in history, you might be even more surprised to learn that the UN did so rather unwillingly, and only under the immense pressure of thousands of women and women’s groups both from the south and the north, initiated by a global women’s network coordinated by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL). The network was determined to have women’s rights recognised as human rights by the world’s governments at the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993, and started to work towards this goal three years before this landmark event … (full text, Feb 26, 2007).
• … On the first day of the year (2002), Turkey’s civil code recognized women as equal to men, the result of parliamentary revisions that have made family law in this predominately Muslim country among the most equitable in the world. Turkey is the world’s most secular Muslim nation, even forbidding women to wear the traditional head scarf in government offices and on campus. “This symbolizes a historic turning point,” the Ankara-based Flying Broom women’s rights group said in a statement. “Our country is closer to achieving the goal of equality between women and men.” At a time of increased debate on the rights of Muslim women, Turkey’s revised code is revolutionary compared to similar laws in other Muslim countries. It also highlights the complex interplay of politics and religion in the Middle East … (full text, Jan 13, 2002).
• Türkiye´nin önde gelen kadın hakları savunucularından Pınar İlkkaracan, New York´ta ´´Peter-Patricia Gruber 2007 Uluslararası Kadın Hakları Ödülü´´ne layık görüldü. Türkiye´nin önde gelen kadın hakları savunucularından Pınar İlkkaracan, New York´ta ´´Peter-Patricia Gruber 2007 Uluslararası Kadın Hakları Ödülü´´ne layık görüldü. … (full text, 17 Ekim 2007).

links:

Fearful Symbols: The Islamic Headscarf and the European Court of Human Rights, by T. Jeremy Gunn, draft 4 July 2005, 29 pdf-pages;

Turkish women slow to benefit from Ankara’s reforms (Reuters), by Emma Ross-Thomas, November 7, 2006;

Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its article 2;

Turkish Law Recognizes Women, Men as Equals, Jan 13, 2002;

When a male AKP MP opposed the “Gender Equality” name of the planned committee in parliament, it was changed to “Equality of Opportunities”. Women have reacted in protest, 11-02-2009;

Kadınlar ‘eşitlik’ zirvesinde buluştu, Sabah, Turkey, 16 Feb 2009;

AKP Meclis’te “Kadın-Erkek Eşitliği” Komisyonunu Engelliyor, Biamag, Turkey, 11 Feb 2009;

Eşitlik Komisyonu, Kadınların 10 Yıllık Mücadelesiyle Meclise Geldi, Kadın Haberleri, Turkey, 9 Feb 2009.

Raoul Schrott is at home in many countries, languages and cultures. He is the prototype of the ‘poeta doctus’, a cunning Proteus with a large and variegated oeuvre encompassing volumes of poetry, novels, short stories and an essayistic output of considerable intellectual prowess. He is a man of undeniable courage, witness the title of his much-talked-about poetry compendium: Die Erfindung der Poesie / Gedichte der ersten viertausend Jahre (The Invention of Poetry / Poems from the First Four Thousand Years,1977). Witness also his translation and modern adaptation of the Babylonian-Assyrian Epic of Gilgamesh. His search for the roots of language has led him to ‘small languages’ such as Breton, Basque and Occitan. Making tradition work for the present time is Schrott’s aim: In fact, I look upon poetry as a millennia-old machine that determines our literary production far more than we do ourselves. Schrott’s seemingly traditional stanzas are highly structured by a network of rudimentary rhymes; his vocabulary is as rich as a painter’s palette, for instance in the description of pigments and tinctures in ‘Cefalù’. The absence of conventional punctuation marks is compensated by various subtle structural devices. In the poem ‘La Ziza’, for instance, the length and number of lines is crucial: rotated a quarter turn, this poem exactly represents the silhouette of this Arab-Norman castle with its nineteen battlements and three gates … (full text).

… In Raoul Schrotts Gedichten laufen Erkenntnistheorie, Phänomenologie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte ineinander, ohne dass er je den Nahblick auf die Dinge verliert. Vernunft und Sinnlichkeit verschmelzen zu einer Weltsicht, die das eigene Selbst und das eigene Wissen relativiert. Raoul Schrott vermag es, bei seiner gedichtweisen Weltaneignung auf dem schmalen Grat zwischen Physik und Metaphysik zu balancieren und dabei niemals die humorvolle, augenzwinkernde Distanz zu verlieren. Unter zahlreichen anderen Auszeichnungen erhielt Raoul Schrott 1995 den Leonce-und-Lena-Preis, 1996 Berliner Literaturpreis und 1999 den Peter-Huchel-Lyrikpreis. Raoul Schrott lebt heute in Irland. Raoul Schrott (* 17. Januar 1964 in Landeck, Tirol) ist ein österreichischer Literaturwissenschaftler, Komparatist und Schriftsteller. (full text).

Raoul Schrott (* 17. Januar 1964 in Landeck, Tirol) ist ein österreichischer Literaturwissenschaftler, Komparatist und Schriftsteller … // … Ab 2005 arbeitete er an einer Neuübersetzung von Homers Ilias. Sie wurde von den Hörspielredaktionen des Hessischen Rundfunks und von Deutschlandfunk in Auftrag gegeben, als Hörspiel mit dem alleinigen Sprecher Manfred Zapatka und in der Regie von Klaus Buhlert produziert und ausgestrahlt … (full text).

A german-bio on the Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck.

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Raoul Schrott – Austria

Two videos in german:

• Druckfrisch – Raoul Schrott, 9.23, April 14, 2008;
• Raoul Schrott über seine Neufassung der Ilias von Homer, 6.11 min, Nov 8, 2008.

… He is a prolific producer of essays, novels, and poetry, for which he won a major litrary prize about 5 years ago. I have just run across him myself and so while I have ordered a number of his works from interlibrary loan, I have yet to read them. I became aware of him by finding and listening to a fascinating 12-part radio series that he produced about a decade ago called die Erfindung der Poesie … (full text /Forum).

… Schrott can be considered not only an Austrian writer, but a cosmopolitan writer. Though he is best known for his poetry, his writing is as varied as his locale and encompasses many other genres, including the novel, the short story, and the essay. Schrott also successfully undertook the ambitious endeavor of translating and adapting the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh … (full text).

Listen in german on podcast: Die sumerische Hohepriesterin Enheduanna und die Hofdichterin, Länge 20.33 min … Il(…)ummiya* (* Name nicht lesbar) eröffnen Raoul Schrotts Anthologie als erste namentlich bekannte Dichter. Die sumerische Kultur entwickelte als erste die Schrift und gibt einen Einblick in den Ursprung der Poesie … (full text 01/12: Enheduanna, Ilummiya und die sumerische Literatur /24. Jh. v. Chr).

• He is co-author in The Night Begins with a Question, 25 Austrian Poems.
• An alle Asphaltdschungel Campbewohner, Jan. 21, 2009.
• The PIP List of Contemporary Poets, The PIP Anthology of World Poetry in the Twentieth Century, November 27, 2008.
• ‘Erkenntnistheoretische Maschinen’: Questions about the Sublime in the Work of Raoul Schrott, 6 Jan 2003.
• Raoul Schrott und Properz, in: Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 35/2, 2003 [2005], S. 219-238, by Ulrich Schmitzer.
• RAOUL SCHROTT, Chicago Review: Presents several poems, Summer2002, Vol. 48 Issue 2/3, p258, 6p.
• Download Raoul Schrott from NowTorrents.
• Science in contemporary poetry: a point of comparison between Raoul Schrott and Durs Grunbein, 30 Dec 2000.

As a lover of lists, I was intrigued by the list of 100 Near Perfect Books of Poetry compiled by the people at the Lilliput Review.  So I undertook a less ambitious project of listing the 50 Near Perfect Books of  German Poetry, limiting it to 1) books published since 1900, and 2) collections or poem cycles published in the poet’s lifetime. The list is arranged by date of publication. I make no claims of completeness or objectivity: the choices are mine alone. No doubt Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Germany’s Literary Pope, would heap scorn on many of my choices. So be it … (full text 50 Near Perfect Books of German Poetry, August 17, 2008).

Find him and his publications (in english and german) on amazon; on flickr; on literature-map; on alibris; on ABeBooks; on Google Video-search; on inauthor Google-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search. And in german only: on Linksammlung FU Berlin; on de.Nationalbibliothek; on de.wikipedia: Werke, Filme, Sekundärliteratur; on lyrikline; on de.perlentaucher; on Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck; on IMDb.

One of the most striking characteristics of Raoul Schrott’s and Durs Grünbein’s poetry is its thematisation of science. Schrott and Grünbein are remarkably different contemporary poets however: in this paper I suggest that their conflicting uses of science in poetry constitute a useful point of comparison. Schrott’s scientists are poet-like figures who see the world in a new way, extending perspective and providing an example to the modern-day lyric subject. For Schrott, science is a set of metaphors, a benign language of poetry … (full text, 1, January 2001).

… The Trojan War is the mythical event that stands at the beginning of European history, and to which Homer’s Iliad bears magnificent testimony. But what is true in this story, and what is fiction? Who was Homer, the mythical bard, in reality? Raoul Schrott’s large-scale treatise contains a wealth of data, facts, references and evidence, reconstructing, for the first time in more than 2,500 years, not only the contemporary background of The Iliad but also Homer’s origin and personality. The literary sources of The Iliad, assembled from diverse cultures, point to a territory and a people that counted itself among the Danaians and Archians: to Kilikia. Raoul Schrott has examined Kilikian sources for the gods and heroes portrayed in The Iliad. Travelling across Kilikia, he discovered the real story which Homer projected onto the ancient legend of Troy, and the historical models for immortal characters such as Paris, Helena, Hector, Achilles and Priam. Finally, he leads us to the site on which Homer modelled his city of Troy: the mountain fort of Karatepe, the brightest flower of Kilikian culture … (full text, March 3, 2008).

… Das Skandalbuch der Saison heißt HOMERS HEIMAT, geschrieben von Raoul Schrott. Was allenfalls Altphilologen in Wallung versetzt, steht plötzlich im öffentlichen Interesse – die Behauptung, Homer sei kein Grieche gewesen. Jetzt ist Raoul Schrotts Übertragung von Homers Ilias erschienen, der eigentliche Kern- und Ausgangspunkt des Streits. Hier wird einer der wichtigsten Texte der Weltliteratur mit einer heutigen Sprache wieder zum Leben erweckt … (full text, 11. Januar 2009).

Homers Schilderungen vom Kampf um Troia haben eine neue zeitbezogene Sprache erhalten. Raoul Schrott räumt auf mit Hexametern und geflügelten Worten und versetzt die Helden Homers sprachlich in unsere Zeit. Doch Schrott provoziert nicht allein mit seinem Transfer der Sprache des großen Dichters. Auch seine Thesen zu Leben und Werk des Dichters – Homer ein Schreiber-Eunuch in assyrischen Diensten – und seine Vorstellung von der geografischen Lage der Stadt – Troia in Kilikien – haben nicht nur in der Fachwelt eine leidenschaftlich geführte Diskussion eröffnet … (full text, 16. September 2008).

Das objektivste Qualitätskriterium sei angesichts der “Überproduktion” des Buchmarktes die “Selektion der Zeit”. Er verweist auf jene Texte, die “Jahrtausende überstanden” haben … (full text, 31. Januar 2009).

links:

the blog THOUGHTS OF XANADU;

the blog German Poetry;

100 Near Perfect Books of Poetry, August 10, 2008;

50 Near Perfect Books of German Poetry at Dialog International, August 17, 2008;

the blog The Presurfer;

the blog NAZIONE INDIANA;

Universitätsbibliothek der Freien Universität Berlin;

le blog LE BIBLIOMANE;

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek;

the blog Romenu.be;

de.wikipedia-Kategorien: Autor; Literatur (20. Jahrhundert); Literatur (Österreich); Literatur (Deutsch); Drama; Lyrik.

Maya John Ingty (born in 1932) plays a unique role in the conflict-ridden Northeast region, bringing together powerful Christian and secular organizations to work for peace. Several states in the Northeast have been torn by conflict and strife, both internal and with the security forces. This conflict has left the economy and society in a shambles. The region has a high number of school and college dropouts and there are a number of young widows who have to fend for themselves and their young children. Ingty, the first woman from the Karbi tribe to complete a Masters degree, has been involved in social work right from her college days. In 1956, she was appointed Special Officer (Social Welfare) through an application and interview in undivided Assam, when Shillong was the capital of Assam. Meghalaya was formed as a separate state only in 1972 … (full text).

… Maya is also a respected member of the Church and plays an important role in critiquing the regressive positions of the Church. She has pushed for greater involvement of the Church with social issues and with other secular and non-Christian organisations in their work for peace. As Secretary of the Diocesan Board of Participatory Development, she has undertaken several programmes to help young people develop self-employment skills. She firmly believes this will lead them away from the gun culture. The activities include natural resource management, weaving and tailoring, vermicomposting, fishery, and training people to be barefoot veterinary doctors, automobile drivers and electricians. With no training, and often no forum behind her, Maya has worked with marginalised people since 1956. She has also been active in ecological and conservation programmes. Many young people received training in vermicomposting in Tinsukia (Upper Assam) under an eco-friendly waste control programme. Since then, many of them have taken up organic farming. In her individual capacity as well, Maya has been a member of important peace missions and committees in the strife-torn Northeastern region. (full text).

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Maya John Ingty – India

She works for the Diocesan Board for Participatory Development, for the Interdenominational Christian Women’s Forum, and for the Northeast Christian Council Women’s Assembly (no own website for all three groups).

Tribute to an Educator and Peace Builder, 5 pdf-pages.

(1000peacewomen): Being a respected member of the church does not constrain Maya from critiquing its regressive positions and pushing for its greater involvement with social, often secular, issues. Maya John Ingty plays a unique role in the northeast, bringing together powerful Christian and secular organizations to work for peace. She is strongly driven by her conviction that working for social justice issues should not be determined by caste, creed, or religious persuasions.

She also mobilizes the youth and women-through group discussions, skill-building, and alternative ideas for sustainable development for women-toward education and employment as a means of drawing people away from the pervasive culture of the gun.

Maya John Ingty (born on 16 March 1932) is a Karbi, an indigenous, marginalized tribe in the Indian Northeast. With four brothers and sister, she was born into a family committed to social issues. Her father was a dubhashi (interpreter/translator of the court). Maya was the first Karbi woman to complete a Masters degree. She did her Bachelors and BT from Gauhati University and her MEd from Allahabad University. Her eldest brother, Samseen S Ingty, influenced the creation of the Karbi Anglong district in Assam.

Maya was involved in social activities from her college days through the Student Christian Movement of Northeast India. In 1956, she was appointed special officer (Social Welfare) in undivided Assam, when Shillong was then its capital. (Meghalaya became a breakaway state only in 1972.) After her marriage in 1958, she resigned and joined the Union Christian College (UCC) in Meghalaya, where her husband worked.

As a government officer, Maya was a desk-bound upper-level bureaucrat. But her heart was in grassroots activities. While at the UCC, she mobilized a group of women and formed a women’s association, which conducted several health programs and started a primary school. It also helped in the formation of a high school in Umbir village in Meghalaya. The women’s association is still exists and continues to run healthcare programs, school education, and immunization camps.

For six years, Maya worked as president of the Northeast India Christian Council Women’s Assembly, conducting many workshops and discussions on topics relating to women’s development. Much of this work was transacted with people working in conflict situations. She regularly visits the Northeast’s conflict-ridden areas, trying to support women and women’s groups who are struggling to bring a modicum of peace to their villages.

Maya has become well-known in the region, and is often sought out for counsel. In 1967, at the UCC school, she chanced upon a young boy bleeding from the nose. She promptly fetched the leaves of a plant locally called Nephuga, which she crushed and applied to the boy’s nose. Years later, a young paratrooper came up to her when she was visiting the local bank at Shillong. He introduced himself as the young boy who she had cured with the “wonder plant”, and said that he would always remember her as a friend of the village people.

Although Maya is an active, committed, and respected member of the Church of North India, and secretary of the Diocesan Board of Participatory Development, she does not hesitate to critique the Church’s regressive positions. Under the Skill for Progress program undertaken by the Diocesan Board, she has been instrumental in initiating programs for young people in natural resource management, weaving and tailoring, vermicomposting, fishery, and training people to be barefoot veterinary doctors, automobile drivers, and electricians.

She has been instrumental in pushing for greater commitment to social issues by the Church, and for its involvement with other secular and non-Christian peace organizations. Maya’s role in the region is unique – bringing together powerful Christian and secular organizations under the umbrella of peace. She is strongly driven by her conviction that working for social justice issues should not be determined or limited by caste, creed, or religious persuasions.

One of the Northeast’s abiding problems is its high number of school and college dropouts. Primary among the many reasons is insurgency. Young widows who have to fend for themselves and their young children are multitudinous. The dropouts are given non-formal training in order to enhance their self-employed earning capacity, which effectively weans them away from the prevalent “gun-toting culture”.

Maya has also taken up various state government schemes to support her work with the youth. It was through her initiative that vermicomposting training was imparted in Tinsukia (Upper Assam) under an eco-friendly waste control program. Since then, a good number of young people have been trained in the process, and have taken up organic farming.

In her individual capacity, Maya, who has been a member of important peace missions and committees in the Northeast, uses group discussions, networking, awareness programs, skill-building and training, and alternative ideas for sustainable development and livelihood. With tenuous training, and frequently lacking the support of a forum, Maya has been working in the villages with the marginalized people since 1956. It is a measure of her illustriousness that she is welcome in all communities in the region, without regard to caste, religion, or creed. (1000peacewomen).

links:

Shillong on wikipedia, on Shillong online, on Shillon travel guide, on encyclopedia.com;

Video results for Shillong: Manipuri song in Shillong, 5.31 min, May 19, 2007; Devoid – Possessed at Shillong, 3.04 min, September 03, 2007; Shillong XBHP, 3.00 min, June 06, 2007;

Highlights of the International Conference on Conflict Resolution, Peace … , by Tebtebba Foundation, 7 Oct 2008, 93 pages;

The Middle East, By Library Information and Research Service, 2004;

Reclaiming Balance, By Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Joji Cariño, Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education;

Meghalaya Women’s Alliance MWA;

WE WILL KEEP THE PAST NOT BEHIND US BUT IN FRONT OF US! – MANILA DECLARATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CONFLICT RESOLUTION, PEACE BUILDING, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES;

Christian Women Today.