C.T. Lawrence Butler – USA

Linked with Keith McHenry – USA, with THE FOOD NOT BOMBS MOVEMENT, and with Helping the Homeless – The Right To Food.

Currently, C.T. lives in Takoma Park, Maryland with his friends who are creating a Green intentional community. He is a father, an author, a political activist, a pro-feminist, a nonviolence trainer, and a vegetarian chef. He is active in the National Organization of Men Against Sexism, The Greens (USA), the War Resisters League, the New England Nonviolence Trainers Network, ACT UP/Maine, the Casco Bay Greens, and the Maine War Tax Resistance Resource Center. He was co-editor of The Dove, a newsletter on war tax resistance in Maine. He is writing his third book, A Food Not Bombs Cookbook. (See on foot not bombs.net).

Read the book: ‘Food not Bombs‘, ISBN: 1884365213.

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C.T. Lawrence Butler – USA

He works for THE FOOD NOT BOMBS MOVEMENT.

C.T. Butler moved to Boston in 1976 with a theatre troupe he had helped form in his hometown of Newark, Delaware. Their first production was a children’s play called Tales of Old Mother Goose. Over the next three years, C.T. managed and produced seven additional productions, most notably Sylvia Plath and The Marlowe Show.

In 1979, he joined an affinity group at the urging of an actor friend and participated in two major occupation attempts of Seabrook Nuclear Power Station organized by the Coalition for Direct Action at Seabrook, a spin-off of the Clamshell Alliance. These actions introduced C.T. to two concepts – nonviolent direct action and consensus decision making – which changed his life. Over the past decade, C.T. has pursued his exploration of these two disciplines by becoming a war tax resister and participating in numerous social change/political action groups.

In 1980, C.T. and a group of friends formed the Food Not Bombs collective in Cambridge. This collective spent the first few years engaged in political action, food recovery, feeding the hungry, and experiments in community. In 1984, the food recovery and distribution part of Food Not Bombs became an official agency of the City of Cambridge. Later, C.T. was acknowledged for his work in Cambridge by being appointed to the Commission on Peace Education and Nuclear Disarmament of the City.

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Praful Bidwai – India

Linked with Inter Press Services IPS, with BB’s make-or-break choice, with Deal becoming a hot potato, with Political Fallout of Indo-US Nuclear Deal Turns Severe, and with ‘At democracy’s crossroads‘.

Praful Bidwai is a New Delhi-based political analyst and peace activist, a columnist with twenty-five Indian newspapers and co-author (with Achin Vanaik) of New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament. He shared the International Peace Bureau’s Sean MacBride International Peace Prize for 2000 with Vanaik.

Read: No Nukes For Peace, August 13, 2007.

He writes: The United States-India nuclear cooperation agreement, tabled in India’s Parliament on Monday, has precipitated the worst-ever political crisis for the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government since it was formed a little over three years ago. Although the existence of the ‘left-of-centre’ UPA government is not immediately threatened, it has clearly lost the support of the communist parties on this defining foreign and security policy issu … (full text, August 21, 2007).

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Praful Bidwai – India

He writes also: … The NDA’s main charge against Patil was that she would be a mere « rubber-stamp » for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The underlying assumption is that Shekhawat would act as a counterfoil to Singh. This betrays a profound misunderstanding of the role of the Indian president under the constitution, the president is not an alternative power-centre, supervisory authority, or last court of appeal. S/he enjoys only two prerogatives: appointment of the prime minister, and dissolution of parliament. Even these have to be exercised according to well-established norms. Otherwise, his/her role is largely ceremonial. (full text).

NEW DELHI, Aug 9 (IPS) – Cancer patients in India have reason to be relieved at a high court ruling this week which dismissed a petition by Swiss pharmaceuticals multinational corporation (MNC) Novartis challenging an Indian law which denies patents for minor or trivial improvements to known drugs … (full text).

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Ronald Inglehart -USA

Linked with Globalization and Postmodern Values, and with World Values Survey.

Ronald F. Inglehart (born September 5, 1934 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is a political scientist at the University of Michigan. He is director of the World Values Survey, a global network of social scientists who have carried out representative national surveys of the publics of over 80 societies on all six inhabited continents, containing 85 percent of the world’s population … (full long text).

He says:  » … industrialization caused the movement of traditional values towards more rational and non-religious values, whereas in the present post-industrialization era there is a movement of the values of survival toward those of self-expression, the expression of one’s own identity ». (full text).

The surveys conducted in December 2004 and April 2006 were supported by grants from the National Science Foundation to U-M political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Mark Tessler. Moaddel collaborated on those surveys, then added some of the same questions to an October 2006 survey of 7,730 Iraqis supervised by the Multinational Forces Assessment Effects Group. In March 2007, Moaddel collaborated with Iraqi social scientist Munqith Daghir, adding the same questions to another survey of 7,411 Iraqis. The surveys were conducted by a private Iraqi research group headed by Daghir, the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies. (full text, August 2, 2007).

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Ronald Inglehart -USA

As University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart has shown, drawing on the massive World Values Survey, people in societies around the globe become increasingly focused on the meaningfulness of work and consumption, and less preoccupied with basic material security as wealth becomes ever more assured.
This tends to breed a sense of open exploration and tolerance that are corrosive to traditional social norms, but also a distrust of established authorities, including government. Widespread wealth creates both a sense of psychological safety and an expectation that we should get what we want, creating a demand for personalized gospels heavier on salvation than self-denial, and a willingness to buck convention when it chafes. (full text, July 30, 2007).

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Martin Scheinin – Finland

Linked with ‘UN Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin says … ‘, with E.U. NETWORK OF INDEPENDENT EXPERTS ON FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS, and with the Institute for Human Rights, ABO Academi University.

Martin Scheinin is Dr. iuris, Professor of Constitutional and International Law, Director of the Institute for Human Rights, ABO Academi University.

He says: ”It is quite clear that in very many countries the notion of terrorism is being used for political purposes to stigmatize political opponents and this takes many forms; one form is that there are isolated individual acts of terrorism by some groups or some individuals, but the government uses it then to dub broad groupings, broad political movements, broad ethnic groups as terrorists without any foundations. That is one form, and the other is when a government is simply trying to get away with the persecution of its opponents by calling them terrorists, even though never there was any single act of terrorism. Those two cases refer to the overly broad use of the notion of terrorism ». (full long interview).

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Martin Scheinin – Finland

listen to a 4.28 min BBC radio-interview on Craig Murray’s blog.

Watch the following videos:

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism (E/CN.4/2006/98) – Geneva’, 11.37 min., Sept. 25, 2006.

Answers by the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism – Geneva, 7.47 min., Sept. 26, 2006;

Press Conference – Mr. Martin Scheinin, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, 36.36 min., Oct. 25, 2006;

Human Rights Council, fourth session, Geneva, 9.02 min., 12- 30 March 2007.

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Harsh Dobhal – India

Linked with Left’s Volte-Face Will Stoke Public Wrath, with Southern Initiatives, and with Independent People’s Tribunal.

He is a journalist writing on concerns of Human Rights.

He writes: Mumbai wants to get rid of its poor as fast as possible. Demolish their homes, throw them out, intimidate them and if they demonstrate against state atrocities, beat them up, arrest them and put them in jail. On April 6, Maharashtra police, always precise and prompt when it comes to hitting the poor very hard, brutally lathicharged thousands of demonstrators protesting against recent slum demolition drive which has displaced about 3.5 lakh people in Mumbai. Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar, leading the protest, was once again humiliated, beaten, dragged and put in police station. About 22 others were arrested under non-bailable sections while over 50 were injured, including women and children, some of them seriously. (Combat Law).

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Harsh Dobhal – India

He works for Combat Law, the Human Rights Magazine.

He writes also: I was last week in an India-oriented Israeli festival called ‘Boomba-Mela. » The name derives from Kumbh-Mela+Boom-Bolay (Shiva). Some 30,000 people gathered on a Mediterranean beach away from the city for four-days, among them ganjeris, charasis, musicians, painters, writers, poets, other artists and people from all walks of life. Many of them kind of hippies of 60s –youngsters, their bodies tattooed, pierced and naked limbs painted in beautiful colors. Amid soft sounds of sea waves, heavy midnight music blurred out to the tune of ‘Om Namah Shivayah,’ ‘Om Jai Jagdish Hareh’ and ‘Krishna Krishna’… (full text).

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Mike Ghouse – USA

Linked with Ziki.com, with World Muslim Congress, with The Foundation for Pluralism, and with Muslims demand an Apology from MIM.

Mike is a Home Builder and a real estate investment consultant … He is Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator … about Pluralism, Co-Existence, India, Islam, Buddhism, Democracy & Terrorism. (full text).

He says: ”Welcome to my world with an open heart and an open mind. You will be continually challenged to think and incessantly urged to see another possibility. If we can learn to accept and respect the God given uniqueness of each one of the 7 billion of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge ». (on Ziki.com).

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Mike Ghouse – USA

He is also president of the Foundation for Pluralism and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. He is the founding president of the World Muslim Congress with a simple theme: « Good for Muslims and good for the world. »

His personal Website is MikeGhouse.Net, and his articles can be found on Mike Ghouse for America, and on Sulekha.com (Connecting Indians worldwide).

He says also: « If we can learn to accept and respect the God given uniqueness of each one of the 7 billion of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge. I believe knowledge leads to understanding, and understanding to acceptance and appreciation of people with a different point of view ». (full text).

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Gus Cairns – England

Linked with aidsmap, information on hiv & aids, and with Asia by DU, Africa by AIDS.

Gus Cairns is a freelance journalist specialising in HIV, sexuality, healthcare, development and related matters and a group facilitator and trainer on these issues. He is also a qualified psychotherapist and counsellor (see separate site). Gus is former Editor in Chief of Positive Nation, the UK’s HIV/AIDS and sexual health magazine. These varied skills have been pulled together to make the focus of a business. Its core aim over this range of activities will be to help other people and organisations survive and thrive. (full text on his personal website).

See: his Kilimanjaro diary.

He writes: A study of gay men with HIV who catch hepatitis C revealed sky-high levels of party drug use, unprotected sex, fisting and group sex among the men who get the virus, considerably higher than among men who don’t. After eliminating other causes for hep C transmission, researchers in three clinics in the United Kingdom found that unprotected group (rather than one-to-one) sex, unprotected anal sex and fisting were overwhelmingly more common in the men who caught hep C than a matched group of HIV-positive men who didn’t. (full text).

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Gus Cairns – England

Read: What is psychotherapy?

In terms of group work, Gus has facilitated the Gay Men’s Support Group at London Lighthouse and the residential gay men’s weeks at Laurieston Hall in Scotland for the Edward Carpenter Community. In an individual capacity Gus has organised training on HIV/AIDS awareness, treatment information and counselling for various organisations including PACE; the Immune Development Trust; Coca Cola Africa; Boehringer Ingelheim; Roche, the Globe Centre, the Media Trust and the African HIV Policy Network. He has also worked for SHAG, a young people’s sexual health education group funded by City and East London Health Authority that provided safer-sex awareness workshops for East London schools and colleges … Last but by no means least, Gus has been living with HIV since 1985, and with an AIDS diagnosis since 1995. He sees himself as a long term survivor of HIV and says that one of his motivations in the work he does is to equip people both with the skills to avoid HIV and to thrive with it if they do become infected. (full text).

See also: his Zanzibar beach photos.

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Luis Macas Ambuludí – Ecuador

Linked with CONAIE, with Natif Web, with PACHAKUTIK, with Globalisation from Below, with Ecuador – Clash of old and new, with Correa’s War, and with A re-compilation of texts and blogs for indigenous peoples.

Born 1951, Luis Macas Ambuludí is a Kichwa politician and intellectual from Saraguro, Ecuador. Macas has university degrees in anthropology, linguistics and urisprudence. (full text).

In Ecuador, where indigenous people represent 45 percent of the population, Luis Macas, a Quichua Indian from the Andean highlands, has emerged as the leading champion of indigenous rights. (full text).

His personal Web-Blog.

He says: “Respect for diversity is the foundation for all social construction. If an individual, nationality or people impose their will on the rest, things will not work. We need to find links that bring us together in a space that fosters respect”. (full long interview text, July 25, 2005).

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Luis Macas Ambuludí – Ecuador

See this 12 photos on flickr.com, … and also these other flickr photos.

See the following YouTube-videos:

  • LUIS MACAS VISITA ESPAÑA, 10 minutes, July 9, 2007.
  • Luis Macas, 1 parte, 09 minutes, August 30, 2006.
  • Luis Macas, 2 parte, 8.30 minutes, August 30, 2006.
  • Luis Macas, 3 parte, 9.13 minutes, August 30, 2006.
  • Luis Macas, 4 parte, 8.45 minutes, August 30, 2006.
  • Luis Macas, 5 parte, 7.06 minutes, August 30, 2006.
  • Luis Macas, 6 parte, 9.08 minutes, September 01, 2006.
  • Luis Macas, 7 parte, 6.21 minutes, August 30, 2006.

He was one of the founders of the CONAIE, of the Pachakutik Movement, and was member of the National Congress of Ecuador.

Read: « Indigenous destiny in indigenous hands, » by Luis Macas, Linda Belote and Jim Belote, pages 216 – 241, 20003.

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George J. Borjas – USA

Linked with the United Nations University UNU, and with Do No Evil.

George J. Borjas is the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Borjas received his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University in 1975. Prior to moving to Harvard in 1995, he was a Professor of Economics at the University of California at San Diego. (full text).

He says: ”Any ‘reform’ that gives amnesty to 12 million illegal immigrants without taking care of the underlying illegal -immigration problem is a lemon. After all, what guarantees that the current batch of 12 million illegal immigrants will not be replaced by another 12 million in just a few years? What guarantees that guest workers will not stay illegally in the United States after their visa expires? What guarantees that border enforcement will be taken seriously by the Bush administration in the next two years or by the Democratic administration after that? » (full text, May 17, 2007).

Look at: The Borjas’ Blog, George Borjas’s thoughts on immigration, labor markets, and random stuff.

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George J. Borjas – USA

Contact information.

Listen to his Google video: George J. Borjas, Costs of Immigration, 54 min, 5 Jun 2006. Harvard economist George Borjas details the hidden costs of current American immigration policies.

His CV.

He writes: « It has been a year since Heaven’s Door was published. And it has been an interesting year, both in terms of the reactions to my book and in terms of how the debate over immigration policy has evolved ». (full text).

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Donna Fernandes – India

Linked with Vimochana, with ‘Dowry deaths’ in Bangalore, and with Madhu Kishwar – India.

Ms. Donna Fernandes is a key figure in the Indian womens movement. She has worked on gender issues for over 20 years and is one of the founding members of Vimochana, THE most prominent womens organisation in Bangalore. Donna has covered issues ranging from violence against women, to problems of rural and urban women, to the girl child, female infanticide, trafficking, dowry deaths, domestic workers problems. She has travelled the length and breadth of India raising awareness on womens issues. She is also known in the international womens movement for her passionate and totally committed approach to fighting for womens rights. (full interview text).

She says: « If women are not emotionally independent, then they cannot be economically independent — and violence against women will continue ». (full text).

News headlines about the theme:
IT City plagued by dowry deaths, July 16, 2007.
Domestic Violence Act yet to be implemented, January 25, 2007.
India’s first domestic violence law takes effect, Oct 27, 2006.

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Donna Fernandes – India

She works for Vimochana (named on India together).

Donna Fernandes of Vimochana, a women’s organization in Bangalore, addressed the students of IIJNM on Friday, October 31, 2003. Fernandes touched upon a wide range of women’s issues in India, including female infanticide, female feticide, sexual abuse and the evils of dowry. This is Fernandes’s second visit to IIJNM. During her first visit, Donna spoke about the feminist movement in India on Wednesday March 19, 2003. She noted how the patriarchal system in India continues to exploit women in the form of dowry and female infanticide. She said that the problem of such social evils cannot be eradicated only by a few NGOs, but both men and women in general should come forward to solve the problem. She also believed that there are plenty of loopholes in the existing legal framework and that many of the laws need to be updated and amended. Quoting the example of the Mathura rape case, she mentioned how a women’s organization was successful in securing justice to a victim of rape, who otherwise was accused of being characterless and therefore did not deserve justice. (full text).

Lire: Meurtres en série pour cause de dot.

Continuer la lecture de « Donna Fernandes – India »