Catégorie : World People

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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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 Jubilee South Network JS, with the Forum for African Alternatives, with Millennium Development Goals and debt cancellation, and with EUROPE SELF-SERVING IN TRADE TALKS WITH AFRICA.

Demba Moussa Dembele is the coordinator of the Forum for African Alternatives, a Jubilee South member organization in Senegal.

He has written a report for the World Development Movement (WDM), Download: Debt and Destruction in Senegal – a study of twenty years of IMF and World Bank policies, 71 pages, November 2003. (World Development Movement).

He says:  » am doing research on economic globalization and training for other activist non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The training is not only for Senegalese NGOs, but for NGOs throughout the West Africa sub-region: Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, the Gambia and so forth … But the World Bank money going to Africa is not helping Africa. Poverty has never been as high, as acute, as since the World Bank and IMF came to our continent. They themselves recognize that they have failed, that their policies have led to much poverty. But they call this collateral damage! They have destroyed industries in Senegal, in Zambia, in Tanzania, in Burkina Faso, in Uganda, in Nigeria and Mauritania. Everywhere they go they have the same kind of policies: trade liberalization, investment liberalization, privatization. The policies have failed …  » (full interview text).

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Demba Moussa Dembele – Senegal

He works for Jubilee South JS.

His book: AFRICAN VOICES ON DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE. This is a wide ranging informative compilation of essays which offer the very best advocacy for Africa – by Africans. Glenys Kinnock MEP … (full text).

Through the African Forum on Alternatives, Senegal, he signed on August 19, 2007 the following statement, together with other organisations: « Stop oil aid: We, the undersigned representatives of development, environment, human rights, community, and indigenous rights groups, are calling on wealthy countries and international institutions to stop using foreign assistance and other public resources to subsidize the activities of international oil companies. These subsidies fuel overconsumption in wealthy countries, benefit an already highly profitable and well-established industry, and exacerbate many of the most urgent problems facing humanity today. It is time to end oil aid ». (full text).

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Linked with National Secular Society NSS.

Mina Ahadi (born 1956) is an Iranian Communist political activist and current member of the Central Committee and Politburo of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran. She is the main figure of the International Committee against executions and International Committee against stoning. She is also a member of the German Central Council of Ex-Muslims. Mina Ahadi was born in Abhar, Iran to an Iranian Azeri family. Her husband, who was also a political activist, was executed on the date of the couple’s anniversary. His execution became her motivation to fight against capital punishment. She is currently living and working in Germany and recently helped to gain the freedom of Nazanin Fateh in Iran. Due to death-threats against her, she has been living under police protection from the moment of her public appearance as the chairwoman of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims. On 20 October 2007 she was awarded the Secularist of the Year prize by the UK’s National Secular Society. She is the mother of two daughters. (full text).

Die offizielle Webseite von Mina Agadi, in persian & auf deutsch.

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Mina Ahadi – Iran

She says: « The only way is to apply sanctions to countries with the death penalty … According to Amnesty International, the number of minors sentenced to the death penalty reached 71. However, I have data which says that 250 teenagers, including 17 citizens of Afghanistan, were sentenced to the death penalty in Iranian prisons ». (full text).

Mina was spokeswoman of the International Campaign in Defense of Women’s Rights in Iran. She has been invited by Amnesty international several times to attend their annual meetings and address their members. She is a well- known figure in the movement for women’s rights and has had many interviews with leading newspapers and TV programs in Europe. (full text).

Video: Mina Ahadi, 8 march, women’s right, Islam veil, hejab hijab, 19.17 min., March 9, 2007.

Video ‘Secularist of the Year presentation, 2007’, part 1, 9.59 min., and part 2, 9.59 min., and part 3, 10.11 min.

See all her videos on Google video-search.

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Linked with The Nuke Deal Is Dead.

He says: « The clash of civilization is a tired approach to the contradictions that we face, as is Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld (Tariq Ali’s book from Verso The Clash of Fundamentalisms will take the piss out of this approach, I’m sure). My own sense, and I’ve actually worked this out in a book for Leftword called War Against the Planet (released in Calcutta in the first week of Feb. 2002) is that we are in a condition of McJihad, where the forces of capitalist globalization and those of retro-Islam and retro-Hinduism and retro-Christianity seem to emerge from the very same flat approach to our current political, economic and social crises. Whereas the fat cats and the running dogs sap the ability of people to transform their rights into reality, the forces of McJihad offer tired eschatological visions of a heavenly future (the American Dream, Paradise) that is without a program for actual social change. Which brings us to polyculturalism: Firstly, we need to get out of the idea that the « West » is the fount of all that is good in the world, that it is the place from which all reason and justice comes. Secondly, we need to see that the world as formed by interconnections between that zone known as the « West » and the vast Rest, and that the cultures that we see in motion around us are dynamically generated by the various and complex interactions, which later are denied in bad faith in the service of nationalism. So, these two facets of polyculturalism may, I think, help us think out of the rhetoric of Good and Evil, Us and Them, etc. … (full interview text).

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Vijay Prashad – USA

Vijay Prashad is Professor and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Ct. His most recent books are The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New Press, November 2006) and (with Teo Ballve) Dispatches from Latin America: Experiments Against Neoliberalism (South End Press, October 2006). He is the author of ten other books, including two chosen by the Village Voice as books of the year (Karma of Brown Folk, 2000; Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting, 2001). He is on the board of the Center for Third World Organizing, United For a Fair Economy, and the National Priorities Project. He writes a monthly column for Frontline, India, and occasionally for Counterpunch.
See whole text here.

Read him in books and articles: his newest book The Darker Nations, A People’s History of the Third World (New Press People’s History), by Vijay Prashad (Author), Howard Zinn (Series Editor); ; A Perilous Way to Socialism, Dec. 16/17, 2006; Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting, Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity, by Vijay Prashad, Beacon Press, November 2001, 256 pages; The Karma of Brown Folk, by Vijay Prashad, University of Minnesota Press, 248 pages; Cindy Sheehan’s Tragedy is Real, The Rosa Parks of the Anti-War Movement; – see also his publications on amazon; on ZNet Commentaries; on Google book-search; on Googles blog-search; on Google Scholar-search.

Continuer la lecture de « Vijay Prashad – India & USA »

Linked with Are Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners?
with The Future of Freedom Foundation FFF, and with Breaking Down an Innocent Man.

James Bovard, who serves as a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation, is a frequent contributor to Playboy, American Spectator, and Investor’s Business Daily. He has also written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reader’s Digest, New Republic, Washington Post, Washington Times, and Newsweek … (full bio at FFF).

He writes: Tens of thousands of innocent Americans are stopped each month at police checkpoints that treat every driver as a criminal. These checkpoints, supposedly started to target drunk drivers, have expanded to give police more intrusive power over citizens in many areas. The demonization of alcohol is leading to a growing nullification of the constitutional rights of anyone suspected of drinking — or anyone who might have had a drink anytime recently. In 1925, the Supreme Court declared. It would be intolerable and unreasonable if a prohibition agent were authorized to stop every automobile on the chance of finding liquor, and thus subject all persons lawfully using the highways to the inconvenience and indignity of such a search. But as the 20th century progressed, judges and prosecutors gained a more rarefied understanding of the Bill of Rights … (full very long text of October 26, 2007).

Look at his personal blog.

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James Bovard – USA

Listen to his 7 videos: Conference, part 1/7 to 7/7, July 18, 2007. To be found within other videos on his Google video-search.

His publications
on Google scholar-search;
on Google book-search;
on Googe blog-search;
on The Future of Freedom Foundation FFF;
on Lew Rockwell.com;
on amazon;
on wikipedia.

Listen to his longer audio ‘Plundering the People‘ on ‘Foundation for Economic Education’, March 12, 2005.

He says: « Americans’ liberty is perishing beneath the constant growth of government power. Federal, state and local government’s are confiscating citizens’ property, trampling their rights, and decimating their opportunities more than ever before…. American liberty can still be rescued from the encroachments of government. The first step to saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose unless fundamental political changes occur ». (full text).

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Linked with Institute for Anarchist Studies IAS.

Ashanti Alston Omowali is an anarchist activist, speaker, and writer, and former member of the Black Panther Party. Even though the party no longer exists, Alston sometimes refers to himself as a Black Panther, and sometimes as « the @narchist Panther », a term he coined in his popular @narchist Panther Zine series. He was also member of the Black Liberation Army, and spent more than a decade in prison after government forces captured him and the official court system convicted him of armed robbery.

Alston, like most anarchists, disputes the moral issues of property and terms his activity in the BLA « bank expropriation ». Alston is the former northeast coordinator for Critical Resistance, a current co-chair of the National Jericho Movement (to free U.S. political prisoners), a member of pro-Zapatista people-of-color U.S.-based Estación Libre, and is on the board of the Institute for Anarchist Studies … (full text).

See his personal website ‘@narchist Panther‘.

He says: « Either you respect people’s capacities to think for themselves, to govern themselves, to creatively devise their own best ways to make decisions, to be accountable, to relate, problem-solve, break-down isolation and commune in a thousand different ways … OR: you dis-respect them. You dis-respect ALL of us » (on his Homepage).

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Ashanti Alston Omowali – USA

Listen to his video of 2004, 2.03 min. (strange, if you search videos on YouTube or Google with his name, the search-result shows ‘no video found’ !?!).

He says also: « Many classical anarchists regarded anarchism as a body of elemental truths that merely needed to be revealed to the world and believed, people would become anarchists once exposed to the irresistible logic of the idea. This is one of the reasons they tended to be didactic.

Fortunately the lived practice of the anarchist movement is much richer than that. Few ‘convert’ in such a way: it is much more common for people to embrace anarchism slowly, as they discover that it is relevant to their lived experience and amenable to their own insights and concerns.

Continuer la lecture de « Ashanti Alston Omowali – USA »

Linked with The American Muslim TAM, and with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy.

He is Deputy for Kafr Al Sheikh, Egypt, Member of the Egyptian Peopl’s Assembly.

Websites and text in arabic language: Saadeddine Ibrahim; Arab Observers – Islam and Politics; Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy CSID.

Civil-Political Rights (scroll down): … The case of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a prominent Egyptian sociologist and director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies can be viewed as a « critical test » of American policy on civil rights in the Arab world for two reasons – he holds duel
Egyptian and American citizenship, and his Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies once received funding from NED. If ever there was a political prisoner who should have met American conditions for contentious public diplomacy, it is Ibrahim … (full text, ).

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Jamal Saadeddine Ibrahim – Egypt

He works for the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy CSID.

In return, US officials, including President Bush himself, set about to express their rejection of domestic conditions in Egypt, including instances such as the arrest and trial of some political activists, as in the cases of Dr. Ayman Nour at present, and, formerly, Saadeddine Ibrahim. (full long text, Oct. 17, 2007).

Egypt Update, 03 July 2007, by Pieter Koekenbier.

Egypt’s jailing of American-Egyptian civil-society activist Saad Eddine Ibrahim triggered condemnation from Western governments, international media, and human-rights groups, but the Egyptian press showed little sympathy for the 62-year-old academic’s plight. (full text, Dec. 2001).
CONFERENCE CSID, August 27, 2007: aAs you know, we just organized our 6th Annual conference on April 22-23 at the Marriott Wardman hotel in Washington, DC. The conference was attended by over 200 participants from many countries, including Turkey, the Philippines, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, the UK, and of course the US. Keynote speakers included … Saadeddine Ibrahim, from Egypt … (full text, May 6, 2005).

Look at: The American Muslim TAM, and: Muslim Voices Against Extremism and Terrorism.

Continuer la lecture de « Jamal Saadeddine Ibrahim – Egypt »