Auteur/autrice : Heidi Barathieu-Brun

Ulrich Tilgner – Germany

He says: « The image by itself is no longer sensational—thanks to modern technology almost anybody can take pictures. But only few are able to sift through the overload of information and disinformation and explain to viewers what it is they actually see. The art is to create a bigger picture for the audience. »

He is responsable of the studio in Teheran for the 2nd german TV channel ZDF.

Ulrich Tilgner – Germany

He says during Monday Meeting in June 2004: On both sides of the conflict, the media formed an integral part of military strategy. For their part, the Iraqis attempted to exaggerate their own strength, aiming to undermine the enemy’s confidence in his own strategy while bolstering the fighting morale of their own side. Conversely, the aim of the Americans was to strike fear into the hearts of the Iraqis by demonstrating US strength and resolve, calculating that nobody is prepared to die pointlessly. On the face of it, the course and outcome of the conflict appear to vindicate the American strategy; but, according to Tilger, the limits of military logic in the absence of a post-conflict plan are also readily evident here.

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Cynthia Maung – Burma

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

Linked with our presentation of The Mae Tao Clinic.

She says: « I dream of going back home to Burma one day. But until then, we need to give hope. »

Cynthia Maung – Burma

She works for the Mae Tao Clinic.

Cynthia Maung (born 1959), a trained doctor from Karen State in Burma, fled to Thailand in 1988 and set up the Mae Tao Clinic. Every year the clinic saves the lives of thousands of refugees and migrant workers. It supports remote field clinics in Burma serving internally displaced persons and sponsors women’s organizations and health education. It trains medics to provide health care throughout the Thai-Burma border. Dr. Maung has set up an orphanage, and supports schools and boarding houses.

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Tom Plate – USA

Linked with our presentation of Tom Plate’s esterday’s article in Khaleej Times Online (a daily of the United Arab Emirates).

Also linked with our presentation on Two women and two symbols of great defiance.

Prof. Tom Plate is:

a member of the Pacific Council of International Policy, the Century Association of New York and the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, with a master’s degree in public and international affairs. He is the author of five books and has been a journalist at Time, Newsday, New York Magazine and “CBS Family Week.”

Tom Plate – USA

From 1989-1995 he was Editor of the Editorial Pages of the Los Angeles Times. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the American Society of Newspaper Editors Deadline Writing Award and the Greater Los Angeles Press Club Award for “Best Editorial.” Recently, he was a Media Fellow at Stanford University and a fellow in Tokyo at the famed Foreign Press Center’s annual Asia-Pacific Media Conference. He is listed in Who’s Who in America and for the last several years has been a participant at the annual retreat of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (Read more on Voices and Viewpoints).

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Rodolfo Stavenhagen – Mexico

Linked to our presentations of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, one and two.

Rodolfo Stavenhagen is special rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous Peoples. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people. He highlighted development projects that had impinged on indigenous rights, forcing indigenous people to move elsewhere, struggling for their cultural and economic survival. Noting that such projects had negatively affected the long-term health of indigenous peoples, and even led to violence, he added that solutions must be found for those and other issues. (See more on Dialogue between Nations).

Rodolfo Stavenhagen – Mexico

Prof. Stavenhagen was at the forefront in advancing an awareness of problems revolving around human rights, an issue about which we now hear a great deal. In fact, he was the founder and first president of the Mexican Academy of Human Rights. He served on the board of the National Commission of Human Rights and has served as a consultant to the United Nations, UNICEF, and the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights. (Read more on duke.edu).

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Index February 2006

Kimpa Vita – Congo 1684 to 1706

A truly remarkable African woman not so long ago (was) Kimpa Vita / Dona Beatriz. Before I give a brief account of her life and history I would like to share one of her prophecies: She announced that she would return as a man in future and build a huge Church independent of Rome.

Kimpa Vita / Dona Beatriz, 1684 – 1706, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo / Northern Angola. In recent history Africa has been home to a number of Spiritual icons, who have inevitably changed the face of Christianity by creating Indigenous African Churches, (by Elaine M. Lumbu, see on this page).

Kimpa Vita – Congo 1684 to 1706. This is a drawig (1), showig how she seemed to look like in reality …

… and here how she is seen by today’s peoples.

(1) I found this drawing on this Google images search, the page is said belonging to perso.wanadoo.fr/ eglise.animiste/polyt2.htm, a page of the catholic church, but this link is actually not working. And, sorry, the site the Internet Archive is censured here in the U.A.E. So, if you live in a country having access, just click on this link (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.eglise.animiste.fr/).

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Oung Chanthol – Cambodia

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

Linked to our presentation The Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center CWCC.

Linked also to our presentation The Fight against Trafficking in Women and Children.

She says: “The suffering of women encourages us to work, to do more to help. We are human beings. We cannot ignore their situation.”

Oung Chanthol – Cambodia

She works for the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center (CWCC).

Oung Chanthol (born 1967), was cofounder of the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center (CWCC) in 1997 and is its current executive director. The CWCC has helped over 55,600 female victims of violence, rape and trafficking in its drop-in centers and shelters. It provides legal counseling, victims’ reintegration, community awareness programs, and raises general public awareness through a media campaign. The center receives financial support from the German government and international NGOs. The Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center looks similar to other shop houses in the area. The steep stairs lead to a small office where its founder does dangerous work saving the lives of thousands of Cambodian women. The face of a woman stares out of the posters on the wall. One poster reads: “Domestic violence is condemned by every culture.” The other pronounces: “A life free of violence: it’s our right.”
The woman working in this room has dedicated her life to eradicating violence against women through the center that she co-founded and currently directs. Indeed, when the center was established in 1997, Oung Chanthol didn’t know that she would have such an arduous task ahead.

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Edward Broadbent – Canada

Edward Broadbent is President of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, a Canadian sponsored initiative in support of international human rights issues.
Edward Broadbent holds a Ph.D. in political science and began his career as a professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto. In 1968, he was elected to Parliament where he served until he resigned in 1989. From 1978 through 1982, Mr. Broadbent also served as Vice President of Socialist International, an organization which links social democratic parties around the world. He was particularly involved in efforts to bring peace to war-torn Central America.

Edward Broadbent – Canada

Mr. Broadbent was made a member of the Canadian Privy Council in 1982. As Leader of the New Democratic Party, he struggled for an equitable tax system, equality for women, the constitutional entrenchment of aboriginal rights and relief from poverty for Canada’s children. In his last years of leadership, he was often chosen as the man most Canadians wanted as Prime Minister.

He says: « There is today a new-found vitality in the UN which must be nurtured and a potential for bold and principled action which needs to be channelled and developed. The year 1995 offers a unique opportunity to do that. »

« Your 50 Communities programme is an imaginative means of illustrating the spirit and purpose of the UN and showing that the values and principles it fosters belong to all peoples, regardless of culture or history. It should also forge enduring links between citizens and this distant, New York based organization which, for too many, is little more than symbols, blue helmets, a flag, white vehicles, appearing from time to time in troubled corners of the world. » (See on International Institute for Sustainable Development).

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Judge Luigi Tosti – Italy

You may see that I present more rebells these times. Yes, I am convinced that rebells are an important part of our culture, of our society, of the struggle for freedom. No freedom has been won without in the beginning a person or a group of persons trying to get this singular part of freedom against a majority of persons not willing to give this freedom. Every cultural changment of any society is more or less in a conflict with what is an installed culture. Most of the rebells pay a price, with life, or regarding their privat and professional situation.

We in Europe have some experience with all that, and meanwhile we may have some skills to handle situations – more or less – but we have still work to do. In any way, rebells are part of our life. So, let’s go on with the show. Today with an Italian Judge challenging us for a question important for us all.

But, again, this blog here is NOT the place to discuss this question. You may have strong convictions, here are presented persons having these question. The answer is given in any other discussion forum.

Judge Luigi Tosti – Italy

The History: On August the 15th, 2005 pope Benedict XVI states in his homely : «It is important that God be visible inside public and private houses, that God be present in the public life, with the presence of crucifixes inside public buildings. »

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Jens Bjørneboe – Norway 1920 – 1976

Jens Bjørneboe (October 9, 1920–May 9, 1976) was a Norwegian painter, dramatist, essayist and novelist. His first published work was Poems (Dikt) in 1951. He is widely considered to be one of Norway’s most important post-war authors. Bjørneboe identified himself as an anarcho-nihilist. He was both a sharp critic of the society and was obsessed by the question of evils and wrong doings. He thought himself as a manic-depressive person with abusive use of alcohol. Jens Bjørneboe was born in 1920, in Kristiansand. In 1943 Bjørneboe fled to Sweden to avoid forced labor. During this exile, he met the German Jew Lisel Funk, who would later become his first wife. After having struggled with depression and alcoholism for a long time, he committed suicide on May 9th, 1976. (Read all the rest, also his literary career – rest on wikipedia).

Jens Bjørneboe – Norway

He was thinking about Human Rights, like here: « To me the United States once symbolized everything that guaranteed the human rights which made life livable—but it did so less and less. Passion may arise with a sudden unquenchable power, but it may die out slowly. I cannot say exactly when it was, but one day I realized I no longer loved the United States. It must have been in the beginning of the 1950s. America had become dangerous, frightening, scary. It represented conformity, corruption, violence, the world’s strongest military, and it aspired to become a world ruler … we who loved America » (1967) ».

Amputation – Texts for an Extraordinary Spectacle: The Norwegian iconoclast Jens Bjørneboe described this work as « a wild, almost surrealistic play—partly sinister, partly comic … directed against those forms of society that do not allow room for people who think differently from those in power. » In the horrible world of Amputation the dissident indivudal who cannot be normalized by conditioned reflexes may yet serve society—in the medical sense ». Bjørneboe wrote two versions of the play.

Here, in one volume, are both, plus supplemental texts that provide all the materials for an extraordinary reading and, for the avant- garde theatrical group, an extraordinary production of Bjørneboe’s shocking and prophetic warning ( Edited by Karl August Kvitko, Xenos Books, Los Angeles, February 2003, ISBN 1-879378-46-9 (paper). $15.00).

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