World People’s Blog

• 2007-11-01: Anna Bu - Serbia;
• 2007-11-02: The 16 Sudanese Peacewomen - Sudan;
• 2007-11-03: Demba Moussa Dembele - Senegal;
• 2007-11-04: Qingrong Ma - China;
• 2007-11-05: Ingrid Eide - Norway;
• 2007-11-06: Nora Castañeda - Venezuela;
• 2007-11-07: Bruce Cumings - USA;
• 2007-11-08: Marc Garmirian - Lebanon and France;
• 2007-11-09: Harvey B. Feigenbaum - USA;
• 2007-11-10: Mohua Paul - Bangladesh;
• 2007-11-11: Mingxia Chen - China;
• 2007-11-12: Hu Jia - China;
• 2007-11-13: Joel S. Hirschhorn - USA;
• 2007-11-14: Régis Debray - France;
• 2007-11-15: Pascal Boniface - France;
• 2007-11-16: Amina Afzali Safi - Afghanistan;
• 2007-11-17: Xinlan Ma - China;
• 2007-11-18: Binayak Sen - India;
• 2007-11-19: iFaqeer - Pakistan & USA;
• 2007-11-20: Lea Ngaïdana - Central African Republic;
• 2007-11-21: Justin Raimondo - USA;
• 2007-11-22: Mandisi Majavu - South Africa;
• 2007-11-23: María Eugenia Aguilar Castro - El Salvador;
• 2007-11-24: Guilan Wang - China;
• 2007-11-25: Alexandra (Alex) Gater - Australia;
• 2007-11-26: Teclaire Ntomp - Cameroon;
• 2007-11-27: Adam Engel - USA;
• 2007-11-28: Ana Maria Machado - Brazil;
• 2007-11-29: Konstantin Simonov - Russian Federation;
• 2007-11-30: Rohini Hensman - Sri Lanka.

Linked with Playing Lions and Tigers, and with NATIONALISM AND THE LEFT IN SRI LANKA.

Rohini Hensman is a researcher and writer active in the women’s liberation, trade union, human rights and anti-war movements in India and Sri Lanka. She has written extensively on all these issues, and is currently working on a book on globalization and labour in India. (full text).

Sri Lankan Rohini Hensman lives in India where she is a writer and anti-war activist promoting women’s, labor, and human rights. Her book of fiction, Playing Lions and Tigers, follows the intertwined lives of fourteen characters from different parts of Sri Lanka, different social classes, different ethnic and religious communities, all confronting the challenges of their country’s post-colonial conditions: poverty and religious conflict. Inhabiting the lives of her characters, Rohini looks at the personal dramas of peaceful citizens turned into violent enemies by the manipulations of authoritarian and criminal government. (black oak books, scroll down).

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Sorry, I can’t find any photo of Rohini Hensman, Sri Lanka

Read: A Last Chance For Peace in Sri Lanka, 21 January 2005.

She writes also: ‘If the Bush administration has decided to attack Iran militarily, is there any power on earth that can stop it if the people of the US are unable or unwilling to do so? The argument below is that if the USA’s ability to undertake imperial conquests depends on its obvious military supremacy, this in turn is ultimately based on the use of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It is the dominance of the dollar that underpins US financial dominance as a whole as well as the apparently limitless spending power that allows it to keep hundreds of thousands of troops stationed all over the world’. (full text, 19th November 2007).

Her publications: on Dissident Voices; on; on ; on .

The OPEC Summit in Riyadh over the weekend of 17-18 November was the scene of a political debate that is not normally associated with the oil-producing cartel. The meeting was dominated by a discussion of the falling value of the US dollar, the currency in which the oil exports of most OPEC countries is denominated. ‘The dollar is in free fall, everyone should be worried about it,’ according to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez; ‘The fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar, it’s the fall of the American empire’. ‘They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper,’ added Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. ‘The dollar has no economic value.’ However Saudi officials rejected the suggestion that the meeting discuss ending the practice of pricing crude in dollars, and emphasised the purely economic agenda of OPEC. It is undeniable that Chavez and Ahmedinejad have a political axe to grind, and that is not hard to understand: both have been the target of US attempts at ‘regime change’; Iran is in addition facing threats of military attack by the US. But is the Saudi claim that its agenda is purely economic plausible? The currencies of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – were pegged to the dollar in January 2003, but this peg has increasingly come under pressure as the dollar has declined. The corresponding devaluation of their own currencies has led to rapid inflation in GCC countries, while at the same time devaluing their foreign exchange reserves. (full text, Nov. 21, 2007).

A GLOBAL SATYAGRAHA AGAINST IMPERIALISM, Oct 6, 2007.

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Konstantin Simonov (Russian: Константин Михайлович Симонов; 28 November [O.S. 15 November] 1915 in Petrograd - August 28, 1979 in Moscow) was a Soviet/Russian author. His full name was Konstantin (born Kirill) Mikhailovich Simonov. He was a well-known war poet who wrote a popular poem called “Wait for me”, about a soldier in the war asking his beloved to wait for his return. The poem was addressed to his wife, the actress Valentina Serova. It was immensely popular at the time and remains one of the best-known poems in the Russian language. Simonov wrote many more poems to Valentina, subsequently included in the collection With you and without you. (full text).

Oldpoetry.com.

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Konstantin Simonov - Russian Federation

Born in 1915 into a military family Konstantin Simonov studied at the Literary Institute in Moscow and began his career as a poet. From the very start Simonov established himself as a poet writing about wars. He is the author of historical poems called “Suvorov” and “Battle on a Frozen Lake” about the heroism of Russian people and poems about international brigades that came to the rescue of Spanish Republicans. As a journalist, Simonov travels to the battle fields during a military conflict with the Japanese army. And as a war correspondent, he writes notes in verse and reports. The idea of a looming big war is central in his poems, his play “A guy from our city”, after which one of the best post-war films was made. (full text).

He is named on the following Blogs: on Carmen Ezgeta; on blog.hr; on kaleidoskop; on rebelde Cuba; on Simonov.co.uk.

Newspaper clips with Simonov’s poems were found in the pockets of those killed in action. Soldiers often got the poems in letters from home and read them before going into battle. Like volunteers, the poems made their way into the army ranks: “It seemed to us in those days, the wartime writer and Hero of the Soviet Union Vladimir Karpov says, that we all knew Simonov personally – such was the extent to which his verse found a response in our hearts, such was his knowledge of the front life. That’s why his poems for us were inseparable from our Motherland, our home and family. In his works the deep patriotic feelings of the day found expression in simple, soothing words. In fact, that was what we were fighting for”. (full text).

War Songs, Poems and Journalism.

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Linked with THE EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION EERA.

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

Ana Maria Machado is a Brazilian journalist, writer, and professor born in Rio de Janeiro on December 24, 1941. She has her lifetime achievement, by the Brazilian Academy of Letters. (wikipedia).

She says: “My thirst for justice is what defines me. Peace is a harmonious coexistence between those who are different, in a world where social justice is guaranteed and individual liberty is respected”.

Find her website in portuguese.

Com mais de 100 livros publicados, no Brasil e em mais de 17 países, somando quase catorze milhões de exemplares vendidos, a escritora Ana Maria Machado sabe como ninguém conquistar o leitor de todas as idades. Entre os prêmios ganhos ao longo de 33 anos de carreira, merecem destaque os seguintes: Américas; APCA; APPLE, Instituto Jean Piaget (Suíça); Casa de Las Américas (Cuba); Jabuti; e muitos outros. Em 2000, Ana recebeu a medalha Hans Christian Andersen, considerada o Nobel da literatura infantil mundial. Em 2001, a Academia Brasileira de Letras lhe deu o maior prêmio literário nacional, o Machado de Assis, pelo conjunto da obra. (full text).

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Ana Maria Machado - Brazil

Her blog.

She says also: “It’s difficult for me to say who might have influenced me. I know I was an avid reader and still am. From North America, my first passion was Mark Twain. I remember asking my father for a book that would make me live through the story from within, very intimately with the characters. So, he bought me The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and that became an instant passion. Then came Huckleberry Finn, which has been the book I’ve read the most times. Eventually I read all his other books. Later, at age nineteen, I discovered John Dos Passos, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway. From these last two I’ve read all they have written many times over. It was pure passion, especially Hemingway, whom I consider one of that very select group of writers who have thoroughly mastered their craft. He is a writer I would like to emulate someday; his ability to give voice to the land, whether in Pamplona, the Gulf of Mexico, or Africa, is truly astonishing. He is so humble amid nature, and his quietness allows nature to speak for itself in his works. Faulkner, on the other hand, speaks more directly to me as an individual. He overwhelms me and never ceases to impress me with his sensitivity and the way he is able to express the ineffable”. (full text).

She works for the Academia Brasileira de Letras, (see also on wikipedia).

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Linked with Gallipoli for Dummies, and with Strike the Root STR.

(First: trying to disambiguate different persons with the same name, maybe I ignored texts belonging to the here proposed Adam Engel.)

He says: “Leftism/Progressivism/Socialism are never the easy way out, otherwise they’d be more popular. If you’re a beginner, though you can start on the GUI right away, it might take you some time to learn how to work the finer points of the operating system. But the price of the extra effort is not only ‘computer freedom’, but a greater knowledge of your rights in the general marketplace. Also, if instead of paying for upgrades etc. as slaves to Mac/Windows MUST do, Linux users can hire programmers to build/rebuild/fix their system. Suddenly, the idea of small businesspeople called on to do programming, networking and various other jobs ultimately makes GNU/Linux much more viable economically, when looking at the big picture, than MAC/Windows with their ‘exclusive’ contracts and ‘forced’ upgrades. Also: hardware. Notice how all this new Windows ‘gaming’ software requires faster, more powerful computers. More more more bigger bigger bigger faster faster faster. Well, if all you want or need to do is run a word-processor, a web browser and a mail program, possibly some graphics and sound plug-ins, etc., you can get by on an ‘old’ (more than 5 years) machine without too much trouble. Everything is customizable with GNU/Linux. As in every other aspect of life, stay away from for-profit, anti-creative corporatism. Whether we’re talking computers or ‘global warming’, it’s people versus profit, we versus ‘it’, ‘life versus death’. (full interview text).

Read: Business Week Ranks the Best Places for Graduates to Launch Careers, by Adam Engel, November 1, 2007.

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Adam Engel - USA

Adam Engel has published poetry, fiction and essays in such magazines and periodicals on Counter Punch, Dissident Voice, Online Journal, Strike-the-Root, LewRockwell.com, and others, like: The New York Art Review, The Concord Journal, The Middlesex News, Accent, The Littleton Review, Ark, Smart Shoes, The Beacon, Literal Latte, Artemis, The Lummox Journal, Fearless, POESY, The Half Moon Review, Art:Mag, Chronogram, Gnome, and more. Adam Engel’s first book of poetry, Oil and Water, was published by Maximum Capacity Press in 2001, his novel, Topiary by Dandelion Books in the Spring of 2005. He has worked as a journalist, screenwriter, executive speechwriter, systems administrator, and editorial consultant, and has taught writing at New York University, Touro College and the Gotham Writer’s Workshop in New York City. (tldp).

Read: Les Miserable and the Hackers from Hell, Cyber Momma and the Outlaw Cowboys, by ADAM ENGEL, January 4, 2003.

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

She says: “The universal protection of fundamental needs of both men and women and the enforcement of human dignity – this is my motto”.

Ntomp Teclaire learned as a pastor’s daughter about the value of respecting and sharing with others in order to create true social harmony. A teacher by profession, she lived in different regions where she dealt with different people. She discovered that poverty and ignorance transforms people into egoists, partisans and creates low esteem. She thus ended her teaching career to focus on educating the Bogso community to improve their living conditions through their local potential. To achieve that she uses an organized work process that integrate solidarity and mutual assistance.

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Sorry, I can’t find any photo of Teclaire Ntomp, Cameroon, in the internet (see also my comment ‘Brave women without photos‘).

She works for their Community Based self help Association.

Village populations have mobilized over the past 13 years through a community association set up by Ntomp Teclaire. She has contributed to the well-being of fellow Cameroonians by providing training on sanitation, education, agriculture and nutrition. Projects are then developed, based on simple, indigenous techniques that provide income to self-help groups.

The long lasting change her work established with her community-based organization is local food production. The sales and consumption of the food have contributed to improving the social well being of the stakeholders of the projects. The international exposure and marketing of the products through several trade shows has lifted the image of Cameroon and created a demand for the food.

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Linked with Articles for Indigenous Peoples on our blogs.
She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

As an Indigenous Australian, Alex Gater has been waging battles against discrimination all her life. The first one began at birth: as a member of the Aboriginal minority living in White Australia, she was disadvantaged from the start. Racism was a concept she experienced first-hand growing up on Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission, an Indigenous community in rural Queensland.

She says: “I dream of the day when my people will be acknowledged, accepted, and not judged by the color of their skin”.

She says also: “I see homeless youth wandering the streets of Brisbane and ask myself: Why are they here? Why did they have to leave home so young? I see the sick and the dying in hospital and ask: Why are our life expectancies 15 – 20 years lower than those of White Australians? Why are our infant mortality rates so much higher? We are all part of God’s family, we are all created in his image – why do Indigenous people have to fight so hard for equality, for recognition”?

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Alexandra (Alex) Gater - Australia

She works for the Anglican Church of Queensland,
and for the Murri Magistrate Court.

By the time she was 13 and economic hardship ended her formal education, Alex had developed a real understanding of the injustices facing Australia’s Aboriginals, not just in her home state but right across the country. She made an important decision. She would devote her life to fighting such an unjust system.

Several years ago, after a career spent working in the ministry of the Anglican Church of Queensland, Alex Gater decided she wanted to become a priest. Her request was flatly refused by the archdiocese. It was the start of what would be a long and very difficult battle but she took on the Anglican Church, and won.

In 2003, after months of heated debate which culminated in her speaking out at the church’s national Synod conference, Alex became the first Aboriginal woman to be ordained within the Anglican Church of Queensland.

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

She says: “The villagers trust me a lot and let me completely fulfill myself in the lecture room. In the village school I teach the children everything I have learned. This makes me fulfill the values of life”.

Wang recognizes her achievement in teaching: “the villagers trust me a lot, and let me fully fulfil myself in the lecture room. In this village school, I teach language, mathematics, music and physical education. I teach the children eveything I have learned. This makes me fulfil the values of life”.

And she says: “I do not regret at all. I might miss an important chance, but I have obtained two valuable things: one, I met my husband who brings me happiness. I would rather say that I have found my true love, the only true love in my life. … Two, in the process of developing my career, I have met sincere rural people who treat like family. I cannot forget that whenever I do home visits or arrange parents’ meeting, I am completely impressed by their generosity and hospitality”.

She says also:

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Guilan Wang - China

She works for the Kindergarten of Huangling County, Yan’an City, Shaanxi Province

Wang Guilan was born in 1949. Shortly after graduating from Beijing Normal College, she went to Yan’an, the cradle of the Chinese Communist Revolution, along with 28,000 educated youths. It was 1968. Since the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, 15 million educated youths voluntarily or involuntarily went to the countryside throughout China. Most of them were inspired by the grand idea of serving the poorest, and they dispersed into the remote and barren regions.

At the very beginning, Wang planned to stay in the remote yellow earth of Shaanxi Province for several years. But she did not expect that this period would stretch to thirty years as it has done. More than a hundred educated youths, including Wang, were to stay in Yijun County. Wang gradually got accustomed to the local living pattern, and then she found her own place in teaching.

Her major area of study was mathematics, but she taught the rural children every subject. Until now, Wang has taught more than 3000 students, and most of them became the backbone of the local community.

Wang taught the rural children not only how to read and write, but also how to be independent and responsible persons. Most of her students lived far away from school, so they had to stay at school overnight. Wang always reminded them: “you come here, and you should learn to be an independent person. Do everything by yourself. Don’t depend on your parents.” Evey night, Wang went several times to see if the students were all right.

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Linked with Rescate Ancestral Indígena Salvadoreño RAIS, and with Articles for Indigenous Peoples on our blogs.

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

She says: “Under a strange empire, the martyrdoms amassed, and destroyed; perplexed, lost, their memory denied, alone” (an Apu Inka Apawllkaman–Quechua poetry).

She helps young Salvadoran people apply native knowledge and skills to modern business, instilling pride in indigenous culture and preserving community ties. (ashoka).

She says also: “To learn the language of our ancestors helped me to understand what was hidden in this earth. It awakened my consciousness even more and I understood what I had to do and whom I had to serve. I cleaned my home and my body. In the evenings I wrote down my impressions in a kind of diary. Indigenous themes were my main concern”.

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María Eugenia Aguilar Castro - El Salvador

She works for the Rescate Ancestral Indígena Salvadoreño RAIS.

And she says: “All my life I will remember that dawn when the old men came down from the mountainside bringing us the sacred wrappers. They prepared a bonfire for each one of us and gave us our respective sacred wrappers. When my turn came, my grandfather guide told me that from that moment on I was a Mayan priestess. I felt the transfer of all his ancient wisdom and the enormous responsibility that it meant. It is a level of commitment and service towards my people. I have committed my own life to this and I must be conscious of everything I do because I am a guardian of that ancestral wisdom”

María Eugenia Aguilar was born 1948. As a small girl she was introduced to the ancestral world through an indigenous nanny who spoke the Quiché language. She transmitted to her a profound love for life and nature. This was María Eugenia’s first contact with her original culture.

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Linked with London Project for a Participatory Society LPPS, with Life After Colonialism, with Woes of privatisation in South Africa, with ‘War of Position’, Anti-Capitalist Attrition as a Revolutionary Strategy for Non-Revolutionary Times, and with Articles for Indigenous Peoples on our blogs.

Mandisi Majavu is a writer and activist based in South Africa. His writing has appeared in a number of South African publications. Internationally, his writing has appeared in reputable websites like Z Magazin. He is busy working on his Master Degree.

He writes: The history and the present life of the San, indigenous people of the southern Africa, is a sad story of a people who after surviving genocide at the hands of other African ethnic groups and European colonialists had to endure slavery and oppression, while in the process losing their land, language, culture, and traditional way of life. (full text).

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Mandisi Majavu - South Africa

Mandisi Majavu, a cultural critic, has written widely on African affairs. He is fascinated by post-colonial discourse, anarchism and has a penchant for psychology, particularly black psychology. He is staff member at fahamu, the network for social justice. (full text).

He writes also: The silent takeover of the continent (Africa) by South African businesses is way too advanced, make no mistakes. According to the State Of The Nation: South Africa 2003 – 2004 (7), available documents show South African businesses running the national railroad in Cameroon, the national electricity company in Tanzania, and managing the airports located in or near seven African capitals. They have controlling shares in Telecom Lesotho and are the leading providers of cellphone services in Nigeria, Uganda, Swaziland, Tanzania, Rwanda and Cameroon.South African companies are also managing power plants in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mali; building roads and bridges in Malawi and Mozambique, and a gas pipeline between offshore Mozambique and South Africa. They control banks, breweries, supermarkets and hotels throughout the continent and provide TV programming to over half of all Africa’s states … (full text).

His review of the book Remembering the Future of Radical Activism, August 22, 2007.

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Linked with Why war with Iran is likely, with Antiwar.com, and with Just foreign policy.org.

Justin Raimondo (born Dennis Raimondo on November 18, 1951) is a libertarian / paleoconservative author and the editorial director of the website Antiwar.com.
Recent Activities: In the 1996 U.S. congressional elections, Raimondo ran as a Republican candidate in California’s 8th district against Nancy Pelosi. While championing conservative and libertarian causes in general, the main emphasis of his campaign was his opposition to the deployment of U.S. troops in the Balkans and, in particular, Pelosi’s vote to that effect. Raimondo received 13% of the vote while Pelosi got 85%. (full long text).

He says: “The warlords of Washington don’t care about international public opinion, and that goes double for what Americans think. The politicians, the bureaucrats, the policy wonks, and the lobbyists (both foreign and domestic) could care less that the people of this country, and the world, have a very low opinion of their deadly antics: all the elites know or care about is that they have the power – and the will to use it. Do Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the Iraq war? Well, isn’t that tough: they’ll just have to grin and bear it, because – guess what? – we know better”. (full text).

Wars to Watch Out For 2008.

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Justin Raimondo - USA

His book: AntiWar.com, behind the headlines.

Justin Raimondo is a policy analyst at the Center for Libertarian Studies, in Burlingame, California; he is also an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which is based in Auburn, Alabama. Raimondo is the author of RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN RIGHT: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (1993), as well as numerous pamphlets, such as In the Flames of Waco (1995), in addition, he contributes regularly to well-known conservative periodicals; his articles have appeared in the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, Reason magazine, Chronicles magazine, the Free Market, and the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, among many others. He is also the author of COLIN POWELL AND THE POWER ELITE, to be published early in 1996. Raimondo has lived in San Francisco for 25 years, originally hailing from upstate New York. During the 1970s and 80s, he was active in the Libertarian Party, and ran for public office under that party label. In 1985, he joined the Republican Party, and has been active ever since. (About the Candidate).

Why Are They So Afraid of Ron Paul?

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Linked with Literacy Volunteers, and with Outreach International in Africa.

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

She says: “To educate a woman is to promote the culture of peace”.

She is registered as a political heroe.

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Lea Ngaïdana - Central African Republic

She works for the Association of Central African Women for the Fight Against Illiteracy

Ngaïdana Lea, is the founder and chairlady of the AFCLA, the Association of Central African Women for the Fight Against Illiteracy (Association des Femmes Centrafricaines pour la Lutte contre L’Analphatisme). Since 2000 the association has promoted women to become partners with. She says, “More than ever before women are resolute to eliminate illiteracy. Illiteracy is the principal obstacle to the improving their lives. They are conscious of their role in the country’s development.”

Since 2000, the association has promoted literacy for women at all levels as the basis for fighting injustice, discrimination, violence, politico-military crisis and establishing long-lasting peace.

Lea studied in Bangui where she obtained a technical and professional diploma, then joined the public service in 1984. She trained to become a literacy officer and in 2002 became the head of the literacy service. She has been awarded several distinctions for her contribution, including Knight and Officer of the Order of Academic Palms in 1997 and 2004, respectively.

She uses Information, Education and Communication (IEC), advocacy and negotiation to fight for the emancipation of rural women. Women of diverse backgrounds are organized into specific working, such as businesswomen, gardeners, food processors, farmers.

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Linked with Friends of South Asia FOSA, .

He is … a writer, blogger and journalist who currently makes his living as a technical writer based in Silicon Valley.

He says: “I have lived in Nigeria (including Sokoto and Gusau), Pakistan, and both coasts in the US. As a journalist, I have been editor of “The Teenager, Pakistan”; a Columnist for “Mag” (an English weekly in Pakistan); and have edited various newsletters, in Pakistan and in the US. Amongst recent publishing credits are “Spider,” Pakistan’s Internet magazine … ” (full text).

This Wiki is part of my website. As of now, this Wikispace is more up to date than the rest of the site … (full text).

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iFaqeer - Pakistan & USA

Talk to him on ‘User talk, iFaqeer on FFXICLOPEDIA‘.
He writes:

• I blog extensively at iFaqeer.blogspot, and WadiWallah.blogspotRickshaw.blogspot (by Vijay Kumar Madugula), and contribute to Urdu-ke-Naam.blogspot (with poesy of Zaheer “Zak” Kidvai), a blog focused on the Urdu language, Sufi poetry, mysticism and the culture around that mix, as well as PakistanFutures.blogspot, which is devoted to Pakistan. I hope to bring a synthesis of all of that to this space;
• My professional life has included technical writing and journalism in both the US and Pakistan. Technical writing assignments have included a Pakistani electronics manufacturer, an offshore software house; Cisco, Mentor Graphics and Cadence in the US;
• I am the founder (or one of the founders) of the Human Rights Project at ProgressiveIslam.org, the Genealogy Wiki and WikiPakistan;
• Work in the Human Rights field started as a Working Committee member of the War Against Rape in Karachi and try to keep himself aware and involved in Human Rights and political issues in Pakistan the US and around the world;
• I am also a co-founder/early member of the Friends of South Asia FOSA, an organization focused on peace and human rights in South Asia (India, Pakistan and the rest of that region).
• A life-long current affairs-and-politics geek (runs in the family), I have been following current affairs generally, and Pakistani, Indian and American politics in particular for most of my life - and just starting to get involved in the US (about life, technology).

… (full text).

Technology, Society and We, The People (Pilot) - iFaqeer: I am starting a regular commentary segment on WBT-TV, a Business and Technology program on Comcast Channel 15 in San Jose, California … (full text).

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Linked with People’s Union for Civil Liberties PUCL, and with RUPANTAR.
Dr Binayak Sen is a paediatrician, public health specialist and national Vice-President of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) based in Chhattisgarh state, India. Dr Sen is noted for extending health care to the poorest people, monitoring the health and nutrition status of the people of Chhattisgarh, and defending the rights of indigenous tribal people. In May 2007, he was detained in connection with his human rights work, raising global concern about his welfare. In a statement immediately preceding his arrest, Dr. Sen said, “For the past several years, we are seeing all over India - and as part of that in the state of Chhattisgarh as well - a concerted programme to expropriate from the poorest people in the Indian nation, their access to essentials, common property resources and to natural resources including land and water… The campaign called the Salwa Judoom in Chhattisgarh is a part of this process in which hundreds of villages have been denuded of the people living in them and hundreds of people - men and women - have been killed” … (full long text).

See video: protest against PUCL activist’s arrest, 2.40 min., Nov. 17, 2007.

His CV, July 2007.

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Binayak Sen - India

He says: … “I was not doing anything secret. Whatever I did was in the cause of human rights and not to further the interests of CPI (Maoists)”. (full text).

Dr Sen says he was treating the ailing 70-year old prisoner Sanyal. But the government thinks otherwise. Sen has been charged with “criminal offense” for visiting the ailing terrorist in the jail. (full text).

Binayak Sen: Victim of State vendetta, summer 2007.

Meanwhile, a few new sites have appeared dedicated to publicizing my brother’s work. Apart from the Save Binayak campaign from a group of doctors in the UK, there is also a blog and a wikipedia entry on him. This must be somewhat embarrassing to Dada, who would much rather talk about the issues and the institutions than his own work. This is one of the reasons why I am only beginning to find out about the extent of the work he and his wife Dr. Ilina Sen (a demographer and social analyst who also founded a NGO called Rupantar in Raipur) have done in the area of public service. (full text).

IAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION – URGENT APPEALS PROGRAMME, June 26, 2007.

Read articles published through PUCL: PUCL seen by Pushkar Raj; Peoples Union for Democratic Rights; Binayak Sen arrested, by Rajendra K. Sail, November 2, 2007; Legal delays result in a standstil: Dr. Binayak Sen’s case: At the trial court, Raipur, October 8, 2007; State repression in M.P. is politically motivated, Oct. 5, 2007.

Background information on Dr. Binayak Sen: His name is Binayak Sen. He had a distinguished academic career in Vellore, graduating in Medicine and later acquiring an M.D. in Paediatrics. From 1976 to 1978, he was a faculty member at the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

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

She says: “I have tried to use my own example to educate and inspire children and their parents. The force of knowledge is great and I hope to change the extent of poverty in my home village through knowledge”.

Read: Education in China: Reforms and Innovations, page 111.

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Xinlan Ma - China

She works for the Weizhou Hui Women’s Primary School.

In 1952, Ma Xinlan was born in a Muslim family in Weizhou, Tongxin County, Ningxia Autonomous region.

Most of the residents in Weizhou are of Hui nationality, and believe in Islam. Apart from the geographical remoteness of the area and its lack of educational resources, the native popular custom was that girls older than nine could not show their faces in public, or make contact with strangers, or go to school with boys. Thus few girls went to school there. When Ma Xinlan was six years old, a young woman teacher came to the township. Ma’s father, who was a traditional doctor, happily agreed to send her to the school where the woman was teaching. This teacher became a model for the young Ma. “When I grow up, I will become a teacher too,” she made up her mind.

In 1965, Ma graduated from the primary school. At that time, only four girls in the township, including her, finished primary school. Ma was accepted by Tongxin county middle school with high scores. Though there was a long distance of 80 km between her home and the township, she never found it tiring or hard. With the Cultural Revolution reaching even her village, this dream was broken. She had to leave the school for the poor yellow soil of home. Probably being blessed by her strong wish of being a teacher, in 1971, she was lucky to find employment as a village teacher, with a monthly income of five yuan, when positions were available in the county. She was 19 that year.

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

She says: “Peace is the environment of trust and confidence that people need in life”.

Together with the European Women’s Lobby, Equality Now, the Center for Strategic Initiatives of Women, and the Feminist Majority, V-Day served as one of the Co-conveners of the Afghan Women’s Summit held in Brussels in December 2001. The Summit provided a forum for Afghan women in the Diaspora from all areas of the world, including Pakistan, Iran, the Central Asian Republics, the United States, Canada and Europe and from different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds and also Afghan women from within Afghanistan. Afghan women leaders from around the world gathered to create a working dialogue on the role of women in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Hosted in Brussels, December 4-5 at the European Commission, the prime focus of the Summit was to introduce the voices of Afghan women into the current international political discourse with officials from the European Union, United Nations, and women’s rights activists from around the world, including the three women delegates to the concurrent Bonn meeting: Seddighe Balkhi, leader of the Afghan Women’s Political and Cultural Activities Center in Iran, Northern Alliance representative Amina Afzali, an Iran-based activist, and Sima Wali, president and CEO of Refugee Women in Development and coordinator for the Afghan Women’s Summit. (full text).

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Amina Afzali Safi - Afghanistan

Amina Safi Afzali was born in Herat where she completed her early education. She subsequently attended the Kabul University where she obtained a BSc from the Faculty of Sciences.

For 23 years, she has been advocating women and human rights. She has also taught at the Faculty of Science, Kabul University. After the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Afzali fled to Iran. Her husband, who was part of the resistance movement, was killed by the Russians.

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Linked with Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques IRIS, and with Disarmament and development.

Dr. Pascal Boniface is the Founder and Director of IRIS, the Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques (Institute for International and Strategic Relations), France. He is also a consultant on strategic issues for the French Department of Defense and Department of Foreign Affairs … Dr. Pascal Boniface has published or edited more than thirty books on international relations, nuclear deterrence and disarmament, European security and French international politics. He frequently writes articles on international politics for national newspapers (Le Figaro, Libération, Challenges). He also publishes regular analyses in international newspapers, such as Al-Ittihad (United Arab Emirates), La Vanguardia (Spain) and Al-Raya (Qatar). (full text).

Dr. Boniface is a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (scroll down).

He says: “The spectators of a football match can enjoy the mythical excitement of battles taking place in the stadium, and they know that neither the players nor they will suffer any harm”. (full text).

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Pascal Boniface - France

Ecoutez sa video: ‘PASCAL BONIFACE: L’ANTISEMITISME DE CHANTAGE‘, 8.06 min., Nov. 3, 2007.

He says: “There are more black faces in the national side, than in the whole of the Assemblee Nationale”. (full text).

Those who the gods may destroy, they grant their wishes. Zinedine Zidane may be pondering that bit of ancient Greek wisdom today. Having announced that he would end his professional career with the World Cup, Zidane had his wish fulfilled. After France barely survived the tournament’s first round, Zidane performed at the top of his game and led the team to the brink of a second World Cup championship. But instead of finishing his career in triumph, or at least with an ovation, he was ejected from the final for head-butting an Italian player. There have been few such tragic moments in football history. (full text).

The French Left and political Islam, secularism versus the temptation of an alliance, September 2006.

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Linked with Institut Européen en Sciences de Religions IESR.

Jules Régis Debray (born 1940) is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He formerly engaged in Che Guevara’s activities, especially in Bolivia where he was arrested and jailed in 1967. He is today better known for his theorization of mediology, a critical studies of signs and transmission of signs in human society, and was a member of the 2003 Stasi Commission, named after Bernard Stasi, which was at the origins of the 2003 French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools. (full text).

Philosopher Alain Badiou and writer Régis Debray are among the numerous other French intellectuals attacked by BHL for their views on international affairs. (full text, Nov. 1, 2007).

Son site internet en français.

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Régis Debray - France

Endnote: Jean-Pierre Chevènement resigned as Defense Minister in 1991 in protest against President Mitterrand’s decision to take France into the first U.S. war against Iraq; he ran as an independent candidate for President in 2002 and supported Ségolène Royal’s candidacy in 2007, serving as an advisor. Born in Jerusalem, Rony Brauman was president of Médecins sans frontières from 1982 to 1994; he has become a sharp critic of Israel and of the Kouchner-BHL line on “humanitarian intervention” by military means. (full text).

Then a few more steps - reading Franz Fanon and Regis Debray on the liberating potential of revolutionary violence, for example, and wondering whether it might ever apply in the United States. Before you know it, friends have created a bomb factory in your basement. But this does not happen overnight - and it involves really complicated and unstable combinations of deep seriousness and self-delusion. (full text, Nov. 11, 2007).

He writes: ” … The guerrilla force is independent of the civilian population, in action as well as in military organisation; consequently it need not assume the direct defence of the peasant population. The protection of the population depends on the progressive destruction of the enemy’s military potential. It is relative to the overall balance of forces: the populace will be completely safe when the opposing forces are completely defeated … By restricting itself to the task of protecting civilians or passive self-defence, the guerrilla unit ceases to be the vanguard of the people as a whole and deprives itself of a national perspective … By choosing to operate at this level, it may be able to provide protection for the population for a limited time.

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Linked with The Grand Delusion, and with Friends Of the Article V Convention FOAVC.

He writes: Essay Painful 9/11 Truth 9/4/07: “Many technical analyses cast doubt on the official explanation of the collapse of three World Trade Center buildings, including those presented by an impressive new group: Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. More difficult than discovering the truth, however, is convincing most of the public to accept the bitter truth. When it comes to 9/11, we face the strong belief that only al-Qaeda caused 9/11. But analyses by many experts reveal the collapse of the three WTC buildings was not caused by the two airplanes exploding into the twin towers. Without getting into details that one can spend many hours examining on a number of websites, the general view is that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition.. (full text, scroll down).

Sprawl Kills, Joel S. Hirschhorn’s website, including commentary, news, book excerpts, consulting, and a newsletter.

TPM café, Joel S. Hirschhorn’s blog.

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Joel S. Hirschhorn - USA

Read: Voting As Political Narcotic, by Joel S. Hirschhorn, Nov. 08, 2007.

He is Professor of Metallurgical Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison 1965 - 1978. Senior Staff Member, Congressional Office of Technology Assessment 1978 - 1990. Testified more than 50 times before Congress on technology, science, and environmental issues. Former Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources, National Governors Association. Dr. Hirschhorn has been a consultant to industrial and chemical companies, DOE laboratories, state governments, and public interest organizations. Co-founder of Friends of the Article V Convention. Member, Board of Directors, National Foundation for Environmental Education. Member, Board of Directors, Sustainability Now! Author of more than 150 papers, articles, guest editorials, and book chapters on environmental science and technology. Author of Delusional Democracy: Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government (2007), Sprawl Kills (2005), New Community Design to the Rescue (2001), Growing pains: Quality of Life in the New Economy (2000), Prosperity without Pollution (1991), Materials Science (1975), Introduction to Powder Metallurgy (1969). (full text).

Does Larry Sabato Really Want A Constitutional Convention? October 21, 2007.

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Hu Jia (Chinese: ooo; pinyin: Hú Jiā; original name ooo; born July 25, 1973 in Beijing), with online name Freeborn, is one of China’s most prominent environmental activists and AIDS activists, was involved as an auxiliary member of the team to save the Tibetan Antelope and served as the Executive Director of the AIZHI Institute of Health Education, one of the founders of the AIDS NGO Loving Source. (wikipedia).

Gao Zhisheng’s First Contact with Outside World Since His Unlawful Secret Arrest, Nov. 3, 2007.

He says: “They listen to my phone, they read my emails. They know everything. There is no avoiding it” … “I will become a full time democracy activist” … “In the past 20 years and more China’s economy has developed immensely. But the political system remains the same: it’s still just the one party in power. That is why there is conflict in the society” … “I believe I have been born to fight for justice. I can’t stand injustice. Even at school I was always the one who defended girls who were teased or bullied” … (more texts in this article).

China To Face UN Human Rights Body’s Scrutiny in 2009, Nov. 12, 2007.

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Hu Jia - China

China crackdown on dissidents before congress, Oct. 16, 2007.

2007/11/9 ooo June 4 disabled Qi was again restricted exit (automatically translated by google from chinese): June 4 Adams Qi is disabled, he is suffering from diabetes, hypertension and hepatitis C. ooo … As he is suffering from high amputation and a number of chronic diseases肢残, if not healed skin left, prosthetics need very high technical standards, ooo … The Chinese mainland’s enterprises failed prosthetics. ooo … Australia churches and friends for a part of the donor resources Qi, Qi arrangements
Zhiyong to Hong Kong to check and the production of artificial limbs … (more text).

Web dissent on the rise in China, Oct. 16, 2007.

The Year of the Dog - A Chinese activist’s story - Hu Jia spent 168 days under house arrest in 2006. This year promises to be little different. FEBRUARY 7, 2006: Today Hu Jia is free. No one stops him as he walks into a restaurant in downtown Beijing. The small, bespectacled man in his 30s who sits down at the table is one of China’s most prominent dissidents, and in the last couple of weeks Hu has been so closely monitored by the state security apparatus that it has been difficult to arrange a meeting with him.

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

She says: “Let us take action for and strive towards gender equality in our country and for a better life”.

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Mingxia Chen - China

She works for the Gender and Law Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Chen Mingxia, 64 years old (in 2005), is director of Gender and Law Research Center in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Board Chair of the Network Against Domestic Violence under the Chinese Law Society. She conducted research on civil law and, in 1996, started to focus on human rights of women in 1990. Human rights and domestic violence were sensitive issues in China with some people even denying the existence of such problems when Chen started to research these two areas. Since then she has helped many victims of violence and evolved democratic management of NGOs that take up these issues.

Chen found that the law on women’s rights had many deficiencies and did not provide adequate protection to women. In 1993, under her initiation and planning, a pilot scheme on the implementation of women’s law was conducted in Qianxi County, Hebei Province. Under this new scheme judges, lawyers and staff of women’s federations were given comprehensive training, and women’s centers were established in villages; the scheme gave a new impetus to the work for women’s human rights in the whole county. The experience gained from Qianxi County was shared throughout the Hebei Province in 1996 and the pilot scheme was awarded a ‘Government Innovative Prize’.

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Linked with Center for the Rehabilitation of the Paralyzed CRP.

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

She says: “The first day, when I was going to office, people from the whole locality came around to watch me go to office in my wheelchair, it was very awkward and I felt terrible”.

She says also: “If an unmarried woman or girl is disabled, the family looks after her by providing shelter, food and a little bit of care. But if a married woman becomes disabled then she just does not have any place to go,” she says. “After a while, the woman will be kept away from her children, the husband will also leave her and the woman will be left all alone without any support or care. So, [the] CRP should develop a program that will provide care and support for women who have no place to go to”.

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Mohua Paul - Bangladesh

She works for the Center for the Rehabilitation of the Paralyzed CRP.

Mohua Paul was born into a financially comfortable family on 18 July 1961 in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Her father was a banker and her mother a homemaker. Her four brothers are also doing well professionally.

When Mohua was 12 years old, she was afflicted by transverse myelitis, a rare neurological disorder that left her with lower limb paralysis. Mohua loved dancing and was learning to dance before her illness. At hospital, her relatives would console her that she would be well again, but Mohua knew otherwise: she had overheard one of her brothers, a doctor, saying that she would never again be “normal”. Hospitalization provided an epiphany: she saw the nurses and doctors remain caring and affectionate despite working long hours and realized that she too wanted to do something that would help people.

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Linked with GLOBALIZATION AND CULTURAL DIPLOMACY.

He is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. He received his BA (with Distinction) in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, the Diplome en Relations Internationales from the Insitut d’Etudes Politique de Paris, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is an expert on the political economy of Western Europe and a specialist on France. He teaches courses on the politics of Western Europe, the political economy of advanced industrialized states, theories of comparative politics, and politics and culture. (full text).

Read: Smart Practice and Innovation in Cultural Policy, Responses to Americanization, Sept. 2005.

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Harvey B. Feigenbaum - USA

He writes: In October 2005 UNESCO produced its Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. This was largely a response to the worries of countries, especially in Europe and not least of which France, which feared the damaging effects to their cultures if trade in entertainment products remained too one-sided. Generally the argument of this paper is that while initial tensions between the United States and Europe were motivated by the usual commercial concerns, Europeans were increasingly worried about the cultural impact of this commerce. The Japanese, however, have not been nearly so concerned as the Europeans about becoming ‘Americanized’. This lack of tension between the United States and Japan in the area of film and television is due to several factors. First, there is a complementarity between American entertainment and the Japanese electronics industry. Second, the Japanese are major players in some aspects of the entertainment industry, most especially in the area of animation, and they are especially influential in Asia. Finally, issues of cultural conflict between the United States and Japan are simply less salient to Tokyo than those which characterize Japan’s relations with its Asian neighbors. (informaworld.com).

Read: Privatization and political theory.

He teaches courses on comparative politics, political economy, and politics in Western Europe. He is the author of The Politics of Public Enterprise: Oil and the French State, co-author of Shrinking the State: The Political Underpinnings of Privatization, and of numerous articles in scholarly journals such as World Politics, Comparative Politics, Policy, and Governance.

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Linked with Zoe’s Ark, with Mes réactions concernant les enfants du Tchad, with Children do not belong to their parents, and with Chad’s children.

French Armenian journalist Marc Garmirian, who is one of the Europeans freed after being arrested for alleged child kidnapping, has explained that idealism clouded the judgement of the Zoe’s Ark charity workers involved in the scandal. Marc Garmirian was with Zoe’s Ark charity in Chad when the workers were arrested 11 days ago but he was set free on Sunday and returned to France with the other French people who had also been released. President Nicolas Sarkozy accompanied them all on their journey from Chad. Ecoutez: (french video) / Vidéo en francais:

• avec Marc Garmirian sur L’affaire Arche de Zoé avant son arrestation;
• L’Arche de Zoé avec Marc Garmirian sur Fr5.

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Marc Garmirian - Lebanon and France

He says: “What struck me was their state of mind, their conviction; they were sure they were doing good and had a mission to carry out” … and: Although Marc Garmirian said he thought the charity workers had shown a ‘tragic amateurishness’ in their behaviour, he did not believe them to be involved in child abduction. (full text).

Read: FRENCH CHARITY WORKERS QUESTIONED IN CHAD ‘KIDNAP’ PROBE, with many links for other articles, 8 November 2007.

But Adoum never met any of the white people. “They didn’t come directly to our village. It was the head of a neighbouring village who visited to inform us of the opportunity to send the children to the ONG in Adre”. That was five weeks ago. (full text).

Look at the more than 3′400 blog statements on this Google blog-search about Zoes Ark.

More than 300,000 Darfur refugees are living in camps along the Sudanese border, having fled four years of conflict that has left more than 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced from their homes. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon on Tuesday criticized the French group and expressed hope that the case didn’t discredit other non-governmental organizations doing “remarkable work” in Chad and Darfur — “and which now are suffering suspicion and violence”. Zoe’s Ark was founded in 2005 by volunteer firefighter Eric Breteau. According to their Web site, the group announced in April an operation for “evacuating orphans from Darfur”. The group launched an appeal for host families and funding. (full text).

Chadians protest on a street in N’Djamena November 8, 2007. Protesters took to the streets of Chad’s capital N’Djamena on Thursday to demand that seven Europeans freed at the weekend return to face trial … (full text).

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Linked with The Center for Korean Legal Studies.

He says: “With huge armies confronting each other, the logistics of actually ending the armistice are very difficult,” … and: “The North Koreans told (former South Korean President) Kim Dae-jung and Noh privately they would live with a situation where U.S. troops remain south of the DMZ,” Cumings said. The reason: The U.S. would offer a “balance” to the historic Chinese and Japanese influence over Korea … and: “Reunification is probably another 20 to 25 years away,” added Cumings. Both veteran analysts focused instead on what Cumings called the “unanticipated” substance of north-south economic deals announced last week: a joint fishing zone; a new joint industrial park in the north; joint shipbuilding; an agreement to ship southern rail freight through North Korea to China … (full text, Oct. 7, 2007).

“A better understanding of the origins of the Korean War”, argues Chicago historian Bruce Cumings, “may be the best way to prevent another, more dangerous conflict”. (full text, December 2003).

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Bruce Cumings - USA

Audio: “Inventing the Axis of Evil, The Truth about North Korea, Iran, and Syria”, February 10, 2004.

… “Soon after the doctrine became public, a close adviser to (South Korean President) Roh Moo-hyun told Bush administration officials that if the U.S. attacked the North over South Korean objections, it would destroy the alliance with the South,” Cumings said.

“Leaders in Seoul repeatedly sought assurances from Washington that the North would not be attacked without close consultations or over Seoul’s veto,” he said, without naming who the involved officials were from the two countries.

“The Roh administration has not won these assurances.”
To restore trust and confidence between Seoul and Washington, the U.S. could take steps including normalization of relations with North Korea or guarantee Seoul that it will have a veto over the use of military force against Pyongyang, Cumings said … (full text, Oct. 17, 2007).

What we also tend to forget is that the United States and North Korea almost had an agreement concerning intercontinental missiles’ … (full text, July 7, 2006).

An audio: Diplomatic Rapprochement (Or Not), June 16, 2006.

… All of these were accomplished or being negotiated when Bush came into office. But the Clinton administration had also worked out a plan to buy out, indirectly, the North’s medium and long-range missiles; it was ready to be signed in 2000 but Bush let it fall by the wayside and today the North retains all its formidable missile capability. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was amazed in her memoirs that Bush let this deal slide into oblivion, since Pyongyang has no other reliable delivery capability for nuclear weapons. Hardly any influential Americans seem to remember these negotiations, although they were major news at the time … (full text, Oktober 8, 2007).

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Linked with The Women’s Development Bank, or Banmujer, and with Women at the heart of change.

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

Nora Castañeda should be tired from her gruelling speaking tour around Europe. Instead she is like a power station, pumping out energy and radiating sparkle; inspiring packed audiences wherever she speaks. She is President of Banmujer (the Women’s Development Bank of Venezuela) – a unique initiative by the Chavez Government. For, as she explains, the bank is about something much more than money:

She says: “It was set up in consultation with people in the shantytowns and the countryside as one of the mechanisms to tackle endemic poverty in Venezuela. Since 70 per cent of Venezuelans living in poverty are women, we decided to target them. Banmujer tries to create a level playing field by empowering these women not just economically, but also politically and socially. It’s a social development bank that assesses the viability of projects, and provides training in citizenship, organization, leadership, education, health and self-esteem as well as personal development. We are not building a bank – we are building a different way of life.” (full interview text).

Her book: ‘Creating a Caring Economy, Nora Castaneda and the Women’s Development Bank of Venezuela‘, by Nora Castaneda, £4.50 paperback, Crossroads Books, 2006.

Same book in spanish: adult book, Creando una Economia Solidaria: Nora Castaneda y el Banco de Desarrollo de la Mujer de Venezuela.

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Nora Castañeda - Venezuela

She works for the Bank of the Woman / Banmujer named on the Guardian, on wikipedia, .

A video.
She says also: “What we are trying to achieve is for women to not only get credit, but also to improve the quality of their lives. This can be developed through an economic model with gender equality”.

Nora Castañeda was born into a humble family in Caracas in 1942. Her mother, who was of peasant’s origin, was “father and mother at the same time”. From her mother she has inherited her love of studying and honourable work.

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Linked with International Peace Research Institute Oslo PRIO.

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

She says: “Failure is an orphan, success has many fathers”.

Ingrid Eide is a member of the Board of the United Nations Association, Norway. She co-founded the Peace Research Institute in Oslo in 1959, one of the first centers of peace research in the world. She has served a member of parliament and Deputy Minister of Education.

She was an active member of the Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) and an early supporter of its Culture of Peace program. Ingrid is the former head of the Division of Women in Development of the United Nations Development Program UNDP. (1000peacewomen).

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Ingrid Eide - Norway

She works for ‘Against Nuclear Weapons’, and ‘No to Nuclear Weapons’.

Recommended Reading.

She says also: “The gaps between ideals and realities on the ground are reflected in reports and statistics. Intra- and international transparency is increasing. The project has rightly decided to focus on this aspect of UN activity. UNDP’s Human Development Report (HDR) is
a particularly interesting case as intellectual history, and as an intellectually, rather than politically generated paradigm shift. Conceptual tools are important: the human development index was
dramatically different from per capita gross national product (BNP)
figures in content and development message. With the HDRs, first
launched in l990, women were seen both as statistical categories,
as vicitims of maldevelopment and as actors and agents of development. ‘Human development reporting’ was itself engendered.
Inter- and particularly intranational inequalities would no longer be
concealed. Gender issues were highlighted and legitimised. Let me
offer an anecdote: I came to the UNDP in the late 1980s to work
for ‘women in development’. I was told by an enthusiastic colleague
that women should now be harnessed for development because, so
far, women had been bypassed. My mandate, however, fortunately
referred to women as participants and beneficiaries of all UNDP
activities”. (full text).

Read: Male roles, masculinities and violence, A culture of peace perspective.

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