Catégorie : World People

Linked with Kicking the Oil Habit.

He says: « It has been seen as political suicide to use the word « tax. » But I am very encouraged to see public discourse changing. You now see a range of voices supporting environmental taxation and similar mechanisms, such as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and the magazines Forbes and Fortune. Senator Richard Lugar, the powerful head of the Foreign Relations Committee, is now pushing for action to get off of oil. There are different motivations for different people. But the way to get the United States to embrace eco-taxation is to form alliances ». (read the whole interview on heise.de).

Vijay Vaitheeswaran – India & USA

Listen to his 7 minutes video on Big-Picture, recorded in June 2004.

Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran is The Economist’s Environment and Energy Correspondent, covering developments in politics, economics, business, and technology as they relate to energy issues. He has received awards for his journalism, and previously wrote about Latin America as the magazine’s regional bureau chief in Mexico City. Born in Madras, India, he grew up in Cheshire, Connecticut and graduated from MIT with a degree in mechanical engineering. He now lives in New York.

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

Linked with The Green Belt Movement, with The rich biodiversity of Africa, and with the GBM World Bank Biocarbon Project.

She says: ”If you want to save the environment you should protect the people first, because human beings are part of biological diversity. And if we can’t protect our own species, what’s the point of protecting tree species? It sometimes looks as if poor people are destroying the environment. But they are so preoccupied with their survival that they are not concerned about the long-term damage they are doing to the environment simply to meet their most basic needs … For example, in certain regions of Kenya, women walk for miles to get firewood from the forests, as there are no trees left nearby. When fuel is in short supply, women have to walk further and further to find it. Hot meals are served less frequently, nutrition suffers, and hunger increases. If these women had enough resources they would not be depleting valuable forest ».

She says also: « Since the beginning of this century, there has been a clear tendency to cut down indigenous forests and to replace them with exotic species for commercial exploitation. We’ve now become more aware of what this involves and have realized that it was wrong to cut down indigenous forests, thereby destroying our rich biological diversity. But much damage has already been done ». (See both on this UNESCO page).

Wangari Maathai – Kenya

She works for Africa’s Green Belt Movement.

Read: Professor Wangari Maathai forge a partnership to plant trees.

Maathai stood up courageously against the former oppressive regime in Kenya. Her unique forms of action have contributed to drawing attention to political oppression – nationally and internationally.

Continuer la lecture de « Wangari Maathai – Kenya »

Linked with e-learning plans for Africa, with Africa and Poverty, with Self-help Assistance Programm ASAP, with TO LIFT AFRICA OUT OF POVERTY, and with Corruption linked to poverty.

He says: « I read and watched plays written by Soyinka, I also used to read the Lagos Daily and I always dreamt of being a columnist one day ».

And: « Africa was in its independence mode and many were going back to celebrating their cultures, these writers were very creative and inspiring, full of our flourishing African culture and we looked to them as our heroes ».

He says also: « Newswatch took a stance against the ruling elite, We started crusading against this kind of rule by denouncing it in our editorials ».

Dele Olejede – Nigeria

Dele Olojede won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his series of stories examining the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda. The series was published in New York Newsday, where he worked for more than 16 years until December 2004. He was foreign editor at the paper, and prior to that served as Africa Correspondent, based in Johannesburg, during the early 1990s. He also was the newspaper’s Asia Bureau Chief, based in Beijing, and had covered the United Nations as well as a variety of other assignments over a 25-year career that began in his native Nigeria. He has reported from more than 70 countries and his work has been published in more than 100 newspapers and magazines around the world. Olojede was graduated from the University of Lagos with a bachelor of science in mass communication, and he received a master of science degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York. He also completed a program in media management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He was a member of the board of the National Press Foundation in Washington, and twice served on the jury of the Pulitzer Prizes as well as the Alicia Paterson Foundation. He currently is executive chairman of Timbuktu Media, a startup based in Johannesburg and Lagos. He and his wife, Amma, have two daughters. (See on journalism.co.za).

Continuer la lecture de « Dele Olejede – Nigeria »

Linked with The Club of Budapest, with Consciousness In The Cosmos, Perspective of Mind, with Planet Life Academy, and with New Concepts of Matter, Life and Mind.

Ervin Laszlo is a leading systems theorist and is the Founder and President of the Club of Budapest. He is also the Director of the General Evolution Research Group and Science Director of the International Peace University of Berlin. He talks about his book « You Can Change the World » – published by Positive News. He talks also about how a more peaceful and sustainable world is possible through individual action and how the book might serve as a guide. Quoting Mikhail Gorbachev, who contributed an introduction to the book, he suggests it is up to each one of us to make a difference. Once we decide to live in a world that is worth passing on to our children, « then even the politicians will come around. Listen on his 4 minutes speach, recorded in August 2003, by clicken on Big-Picture, and there on the play button).

He says: ”You Can Change the World ».

He says also: « (To) center attention on the evolution of human values and consciousness as the crucial factors in changing course – from a race toward degradation, polarization, and disaster to a rethinking of values and priorities so as to navigate today’s transformation in the direction of humanism, ethics, and global sustainability » (see on wikipedia).

Ervin Laszlo – Hungary

Read: Subtle Connections.

Ervin Laszlo is the author or editor of sixty-nine books translated into as many as nineteen languages, and has over four hundred articles and research papers and six volumes of piano recordings to his credit. He serves as editor of the monthly World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution and of its associated General Evolution Studies book series.

Continuer la lecture de « Ervin Laszlo – Hungary »

Linked with Fisherfolk rights and water management in Pakistan, with Supporting good governance and water management in the Indus Delta, with Un quartier à livrer – un film de Feroz MEHDI (Neughbourhood Delivery), and with Alternatives in Pakistan.

India Social Forum 2006: The ruling classes and social movements, Monday 19 June 2006 by Feroz MEHDI – As far as organizing the event such as the proposed India Social Forum goes, the Indian organizations involved in the process have already demonstrated their capabilities with the Asian Social Forum 2003 held in Hyderabad and the World Social Forum 2004 held in Mumbai. Logistics were well managed and orchestration of the program well done, with remarkable improvement from the Asian to the World Forum. Attendance was more than expected with over 130 000 participants in Mumbai 2004. Financially too the India Working Committee managed to collect more funds than were spent in the Mumbai Forum.On these two counts there seem to be no worries for the upcoming India Social Forum to be held in Delhi from 9 to 13 November 2006. As far as the WSF process is concerned, the timing is good as it intends to mobilize the participants for the next World Social Forum to be held in Nairobi in January 2007. As a consequence, the ISF is also being announced as the Afro-Asian Solidarity Process. There is though a different political environment than what existed in January 2004 when the WSF was held in the financial capital of India, Mumbai. (Read on Alternatives International).

Feroz Mehdi – Canada & Pakistan

Feroz Mehdi se considère d’abord comme un militant qui utilise le cinéma afin de faire avancer les causes qui lui tiennent à coeur. Alors qu’il fréquente l’Université d’Aligar, près de Delhi, il s’implique activement et lutte pour une meilleure justice sociale. S’installant à Montréal en 1986, Feroz Mehdi entreprend des études de doctorat en physique nucléaire, avant de suivre une formation en technologie éducative. De 1989 à 1991, de retour en Inde, il réalise deux films documentaires, le premier traitant du Parti communiste indien, le second dénonçant l’intégrisme religieux tant chez les musulmans que chez les hindous. De retour au Québec, l’activiste réalise un document vidéo éducatif portant sur les mères adolescentes dans les communautés cries du Québec.

Continuer la lecture de « Feroz Mehdi – Canada & Pakistan »

Linked with Making Sense of Political Violence in Postcolonial Africa, and with the Prince Alwaleed Bin Jalal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding ACMCU.

He says: ”It is not the first time that the USA has used the mass media to present an entire population as an enemy. It happened with the Native Americans, with the Black Americans, with the Japanese Americans. Ann Norton, who has just written a book on the Neo-Cons, believes that the techniques of Islamophobia is very similar to the anti-Semitism before the Second World War ». (Read the whole interview on inblogs.net).

Mahmood Mamdani – USA & Uganda

Mahmood Mamdani is of a third generation East African of Indian origin. He was born in Kampala, Uganda. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1974. Since 1999 he has been the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University. In 2001 he presented one of the nine papers that were delivered at the Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium.

Continuer la lecture de « Mahmood Mamdani – USA & Uganda »

Linked with New Economics Foundation NEF, with In these Times, with A cycle of illusions, with Bringing the Proposal to Reality, and with Jubilee Research.

Ann Pettifor is the Director of Jubilee Research at the New Economics Foundation in London. She is co-founder and Director of the international Jubilee 2000 Coalition in Britain. Her work advocating the establishment of Jubilee 2000 across the world has resulted in a powerful global campaign: Jubilee 2000 is now organised in over 60 countries. She has written extensively on international debt issues. She is also editor of « The Real World Economic Outlook », an alternative to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook. (See on Resurgence).

She says: “You know, the anti-corporate left sometimes gets it wrong. They focus on what they can see and touch, which is trade. And because the international financial regime isn’t visible, it isn’t attacked. But in reality, it has a much greater power of determination than trade” … « It’s not McDonald’s or Nike that rule our world, at least they make things, but the international giants of the banking world like J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup. The problem with globalization lies in the liberalization of capital flows, [not] trade flows. Those who own capital operate in a global economy detached from real political, social and environmental relations. And this detachment has not come about accidentally, it is a result of “structural imbalances” that have been deliberately constructed by those in power ». (Read all on ‘In these Times‘ … see also their Homepage).

Ann Pettifor – England

Read her book: ‘The Real World Economic Outlook: The Legacy of Globalization – Debt and Deflation’, (Paperback), by Ann Pettifor, on palgrave.com, and on amazon.

Listen to her 5 1/2 minutes talk on Big Pictures (recorded in November 2004). She talks about the Jubilee 2000 debt relief campaign – the largest and most successful campaign in history to cancel third world debt. She explains how the debt crisis came about and describes how capital flows have reversed direction in recent years.

Continuer la lecture de « Ann Pettifor – England »

Funeral Mass in U.K.: There will be celebrated the life and memory of Hilda van Stockum with a funeral mass at the Sacred Heart Church, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, U.K., on Saturday, November 18, 2006, at 11 a.m. Following the mass, those who attend are invited to a reception at Garston Manor, Garston … Memorial Service in New York City: A memorial service is planned in New York City, probably in January after the first week. The date will be announced on this site and to those on the HvS email list. (See a long article on the Hilda van Stockum-Homepage).

Hilda van Stockum was an award-winning children’s author and illustrator whose books depicted family life in the Netherlands, Ireland, the United States and Canada. (On schema-root.org).

Hilda van Stockum – Netherlands & International (1908-2006)

She won honors from the Newbery Medal committee in 1935 for her first book, “A Day on Skates: The Story of a Dutch Picnic.” Based on her own childhood experiences, the book contained illustrations by Ms. van Stockum and a preface by her aunt, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Ms. Stockum’s later books, which were written for children from the ages of 7 to 12, reflected the wanderings of her own families. “The Cottage at Bantry Bay” (1938) and two sequels were set in Ireland, where she spent part of her childhood. “The Mitchells” (1945) was the first of three books about a family like the one she and her husband reared; they lived in Washington, then moved to Canada. (Read all on NYTimes).

Continuer la lecture de « Hilda van Stockum – Netherlands & International (1908-2006) »

Linked with The Development Research Institute dri, with Center for Global Development, with A Modest Proposal, with Afrika: Ein hoffnungsloser Kontinent, with William Easterly’s Videos, and with The West Can’t Save Africa.

He says: ”After $2.3 trillion over 5 decades, why are the desperate needs of the world’s poor still so tragically unmet? Isn’t it finally time for an end to the impunity of foreign aid? ».

He says also: « They [the poor] are effectively customers of this multi-billion dollar aid industry but lack the ability to give feedback and influence the type of aid they receive ».

Read his text ‘Why Doesn’t Aid Work?’ on CATO unbound.

William Easterly – USA

Read his text: Think Again, Debt Relief.

William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University, joint with Africa House, and Co-Director of NYU’s Development Research Institute. He is also a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Global Development in Washington DC. William Easterly received his Ph.D. in Economics at MIT. He spent sixteen years as a Research Economist at the World Bank.

Continuer la lecture de « William Easterly – USA »