Catégorie : World People

On July 10 2006, he was officially sworn in as the second Prime Minister of East Timor. He is also the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

Normally I do not put persons on this website being part of the so called High Elite: Governments, persons in high ranking jobs in the Economy and Society. José Ramos Horta is there an exception. So, José Ramos Horta, Prime Ministre of East Timor, shall be presented on this sites, because of his Christmas message to Osama Bin Laden:

He said: « On this occasion, when we are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, my words, words of peace, are sent to my brother somewhere in the mountains, in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Osama bin Laden. Yes, there are some differences between yourself, my brother Osama bin Laden, and myself. The differences are that while you seem to have a profound resentment towards those who had done centuries of harm to Muslims, and today to Palestinians — I do understand these grievances — and yet I fail to understand why you carry this resentment, this anger onto attacking innocent civilians — and that includes also Arabs and Muslims who do not share your vision of Islam. I come from a small country, East Timor, that was invaded by the largest Muslim country in the world (Indonesia). I lost brothers and sisters, yet I do not hate one single Muslim, I do not hate one single Indonesian. I beg you to re-think and extend your love, your solidarity, your friendship, the same ones you feel about Palestinians, extend to the rest of the world, extend to Europeans, to Christians. You will then win them over that way, more than through hatred and violence ».

José Ramos Horta – East Timor

He says also: « One thing I am proud of is that in 24 years of our struggle not one single Indonesian civilian was targeted by the resistance, » he has said. « No Indonesian civilians, no Indonesian settlers were killed in this country in 24 years. No terrorist tactics were ever used against Indonesians in this country, and there was no hatred towards Indonesians. » (Read more on more or less).

Read about ASEAN, Cebu, Philippines:
Highly successful Cebu summits end as PGMA thanks Asia Pacific leaders for attendance, today Jan. 15, 2007.
Timor Leste Thanks ASEAN, Jan 13, 2007.

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Linked with International Women’s Rights Action Watch irwaw, with The Dominican Republic Country Report, and with the Movement for Dominican Women of Haitian Decent MUDHA.

She says: « This award strengthens our work at MUDHA, our institution, and our communities,? said Sonia upon receiving the award. ?As a human rights activist, who has been fighting for the recognition of the human rights of Haitian immigrants and their descendents, since an early age, I owe this award to the communities MUDHA supports, to my colleagues and to all who believed in our work ».

Under Sonia’s leadership, MUDHA has risen to protect the rights of the Dominican Republic?s Haitian immigrants and their descendants and to empower women and children in the face of deep rooted discrimination and intolerance. Despite threats against her life, Sonia has been a driving force for change and a leader in the movement to end human rights violations against Haitians in the Dominican Republic. (Read all on caribeannetnews.com).

Sonia Pierre – Dominican Republic

She works for the Movement for Dominican Women of Haitian Decent MUDHA.

Like thousands of ethnic Haitians born in the Dominican Republic, Sonia Pierre’s family had previously crossed the border in search of greater work opportunities than were available to them in Haiti. While the sugar-cane fields of the Dominican Republic provided jobs to migrant workers who sought to eke out a subsistence living, such workers were viewed as both a valuable source of cheap labor to the Dominican economy and as dark-skinned undesirables who belonged to the margins of Dominican society.
A Question of Identity: The anti-Haitian sentiment which, in the eyes of the young Sonia, characterized the treatment of ethnic Haitians throughout mainstream Dominican society has continued to this day unabated, according to Ms. Pierre, notwithstanding mounting pressure from international organizations and human rights groups. « In my country, Dominican children of Haitian descent suffer discrimination from the moment they are born, » Ms. Pierre said in Spanish, her voice choked with emotion upon accepting the award. « The Dominican Constitution established that all who are born in the Dominican Republic are Dominicans. However, the authorities refuse to issue birth certificates to the children of Haitian immigrants born in the country. »

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Linked with A World Between, and with The Iran Media Service.

He makes frequent trips to Iran, and has made a variety of reports for the San Francisco Chronicle across different media, blending articles, blogs, video reports and podcasts to offer a rounder picture of news from Iran. He also serves as a guide to other Western journalists, most recently for Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair. His blog « Inside Iran » is currently featured on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website.

He says: ”I’ve also written many articles on Iran and produced and appear in a feature length documentary about Iran, and I am available to publications and television networks unable to send journalists to Iran … I am one of a very few United States citizens who is able to freely travel to and from Iran, and work there as well ».

Read: Holocaust Conference, Iran’s Holocaust cartoon exhibition, by:Jason Rezaian, December 13 2006.

Jason Rezaian – Iran & USA

He is the Founder and Director of The Iran Media Service, founded in 2000.

Read: Tourists in a divided kingdom, Mosques, Starbucks found in Saudi Arabia, by Jason Rezaian, December 10, 2006.

He is a documentary filmmaker based in Marin, CA who runs a blog on sfgate.com called Inside Iran. (See SFgate).

He is also an Iranian-American freelance journalist whose work on Iran has been featured in Vanity Fair and the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Linked with Microcredit and Women’s Poverty, and with Good Governance and Participatory Development.

She is Professor of Economics and Director of Women’s Studies, Hollins University, Roanoke, VA 245020.

She says: ” … I don’t like to say what feminist economics is in that sense. I much prefer to think about what are some approaches that characterize feminist economics and define it by those approaches. Gender analysis is central to all these approaches. In other words, a recognition of the social construction of gender, and its intersections with ethnicity, class, nationality, sexual identity and so forth. So feminist approaches examine the ways in which the organization of the economy, especially the gender division of labor, reflects, reproduces and transforms these social hierarchies. Feminist approaches do not privilege the market, but rather examine other ways that societies provide for their material well-being. Thus they recognize that economies are not populated by disembodied actors, but rather by historically situated subjects ». (Interview on Wellesley College).

Drucilla K. Barker – USA

The value of the 1997 increase in the federal minimum wage has been fully eroded. The real value of today’s federal minimum wage is less than it has been since 1951. Moreover, the ratio of the minimum wage to the average hourly wage of non-supervisory workers is 31%, its lowest level since World War II. This decline is causing hardship for low-wage workers and their families. We believe that a modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers and would not have the adverse effects that critics have claimed.

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Linked with Women Likely to Suffer Most in Central Asia’s Turmoil, with Muslim Women As Symbols and Pawns, with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan RAWA, and with The Women Waging Peace Network.

She says: « I felt destroyed within seeing that, my adopted country (USA) and my homeland (Afghanistan) were at war. »

Read: The Fear Beneath the Burka, by Rina Amiri, The New York Times – March 20, 2002.

She says also: “As a child in this climate of fear, I was confused and felt anger. From a secure, warm and loving family life, I suddenly learned that the world could lack any element of control ».

Rina Amiri – Afghanistan & USA

She works for The Women Waging Peace Network.

Listen to her audio/ watch her video on OnlineNewsHour.

Read: Afghanis in the Driver’s Seat, Rina Amiri addresses Afghanistan’s current status.

Rina Amiri has been preparing since she was a child for her present dynamic role as a peace builder and reconstruction strategist in her devastated homeland, Afghanistan. It is a role she has longed for, and to which she has been passionately committed for as long as she can remember. Yet before the events of September 2001, it seemed inconceivable that she could return to her country, devastated by decades of invasion, clan warfare, drought, and famine.

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Linked with The Politics of Money, and with Good Governance and Participatory Development.

She is Author, Independent Futurist, Worldwide syndicated columnist, she advocates for and consults on equitable ecologically sustainable human development and socially responsible business and investment. She act in over thirty countries. In 1996 she co-created the Country Futures Indicators as an alternative to Gross Domestic Product. She is born 1933 in Bristol, England.

Read: The Nobel Prize that isn’t.

She says: ”Women know how much time, love and effort goes into raising a child. When war arises, all that is reduced to nothing … this is why women’s active participation in conflict resolution is of great importance … We have the power to alter our destiny … If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic ».

Read: Iraq, the Dollar and the Euro.

Hazel Henderson – England & USA

She says also: « It doesn’t take a genius to pump up the GNP [of a developing country] by burning down rainforests, using slave labor and social repression to keep things in place. GNP values, for example bombs and bullets, since they are things that are produced for money (It) does not value the environment. It values salaries paid to teachers, but it does not value what people know – how educated they are. It places no value on `human capital,’ meaning people. It does not even place a value on the public infrastructure ».

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Linked with World Changing.com, and with Other Economies are Possible!

Read: Get ready for more future shock.

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain; as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man’s Land. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper…
… He is currently visiting professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University. In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. He has also won the Lloyds National Screenwriting Prize for his screenplay The Norwegian, a Sony Award for radio production, the Sir Peter Kent Award and the OneWorld National Press Award. (See his blog Monbiot.com).

Read this commentary (pull down the page to find it): In War On Terror, America Embraces The Very Evils It Claims To Confront.

George Monbiot (born January 27, 1963) is a leftwing journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist in the United Kingdom who writes a weekly column for The Guardian newspaper. (wikipedia).

George Monbiot – England

He says: « For me, perhaps the best way, potentially, is to develop the perspective put forward by Paulo Friere in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (http://www.marxists.org/subject/education/freire/pedagogy/index.htm), where the popular educators are themselves educated by the population. On the one hand, you help them to develop a perspective, an understanding of their own oppression, where power lies and what the problems are, and then as they advance that understanding they transmit their perspectives upwards, through the social levels, to the intellectuals ». (Weekly-Al-Ahram)

Read: January 4, 2007, Breaking News About Exxon Funding Lies.

Read: Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power.

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Linked with Complaint on Swiss Taxes, and with Economic Growth and Unequal Wealth Distribution.

She defends a neo-liberal economy, with a state giving all freedom to markets, with low taxes and with the protection of privat possession for economic owners.

Current functions: she is
President of the Mont Pelerin Society (since 2004);
Professor of economics at the University of Geneva, Switzerland (since 1992), (and on wikipedia;
Professor at the Graduate Institute of European Studies, Economics Section (since 1984);
Academic director and president of the board of directors of the Institut Constant de Rebecque (since 2005), (and on wikipedia.
She is also in the Advisory Board of the Free Society Institute, as in the Advisory Board of the Institute of Economic Affairs iea.

Victoria Curzon-Price – Switzerland

Listen to her audio at the Prague Conference on Political Economy, April 2006.
Pull down to ‘Economics of Development’ and click on the audio item.

She writes: ”A defence of inequalities based on property rights takes the debate onto an entirely different level. Thus for Locke the right to material property is only one aspect (but an inherent and inseparable aspect) of individual property rights which encompass the right of possession over one’s own body, one’s right to freedom of thought and conscience, and the right to the fruits of one’s own efforts. Interference by others with any one of these freedoms is a violation of property rights in the broadest sense and is felt to be deeply unjust. Conversely, I have no right to interfere in other people’s property rights. According to Locke, this rule makes for social harmony.

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Linked with Slow Food USA.

Erika Lesser is the Executive Director of Slow Food USA, based in New York City. Slow Food is a global movement dedicated to the preservation of traditional food culture. In this two-part series Erika Lesser, Director of Slow Food USA, compares slow food with fast food culture. Whereas the latter tastes the same anywhere in the world, slow food celebrates diverse local food flavours and taste. Slow Food means knowing where food comes from and what the true costs of production are. It is also about food security – understanding that a varied food supply is a safe one.(Listen to her three speaches of 4.42, 4.49 and 4.09 minutes, recorded on Big-Picture on April 2005).

She says: « The point is to provide consumers with viable local alternatives and a pleasant environment to learn about them. You know, Isn’t this delicious, don’t you want to know more? On a gastronomic level but also on a social and economic level, it gives you the opportunity to support a local business ».

She says also: « Our mission has evolved over the years, beginning with the ideals of old-school gastronomy (long lunches, good wine) in the late 1980’s, to a new concept of « eco-gastronomy » (biodiversity and pleasure on the plate) in the 1990’s and « good, clean and fair food » (a system-wide approach, incorporating politics, social justice, environmentalism and a new definition of quality) in the new millennium. Our members run the gamut, from home cooks, gardeners, winemakers, journalists, farmers, and chefs to environmentalists, back-to-the-landers, educators, artists, politicians, liberals and conservatives alike ».

Erika Lesser – USA

She works for Slow Food USA, based in New York City.

New York, NY – Slow Food USA is pleased to name Erika Lesser as its new Executive Director, effective June 1st. Erika returns to the National Office in New York City with over four years of experience with Slow Food, including three years working for Slow Food USA’s National Office beginning at its founding in March 2000, and the past year working to open the new University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy.

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He says: … « The third thing that has not been clarified in any way was the issue of the fire in one of the buildings adjacent to the White House on September 11. We are used to seeing the famous picture of the White House and a large park. But right next to the White House there is a large building, which is rarely shown because it is very ugly, and it is related to the 1930s. It is called the Eisenhower Building. All the U.S. presidential services are located in that building. This building was completely destroyed by fire, but no explanation was given. Why has nothing been said about the third Manhattan tower and about the building adjacent to the White House? It’s very simple. They did not have any plane that could serve as a pretext. It could not be said that some plane crashed here, and that this was the handiwork of Islamists from overseas. Therefore, since there was no plane, no explanation could be given. So it is presented as if nothing happened » … (memri.org).

He says also: « We see that what America says officially is not only incomplete but also falsified. If we examine some details carefully – particularly details pertaining to the Pentagon – we will realize many things » … ( memri.org).

Thierry Meyssan – France

Thierry Meyssan is a French journalist and political activist. Thierry Meyssan was born in a traditionalist Catholic family. He is the author of investigations into the extreme right wing (particularly about the National Front Militias, which are the object of a parliamentary investigation and caused a separation of the extreme right wing party), as well as into the Catholic Church (Opus Dei, for example), and the discrimination of homosexuality, among others. Thierry is best known for his controversial book 9/11: The Big Lie, in which he challenged the official account of events of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

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