Mois : février 2007

Index February 2007

Cynthia McKinney – USA

Linked with The World Can’t Wait, Won’t Wait, Isn’t Waiting.

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

She says: « We are way more powerful when we turn to each other and not on each other, when we celebrate our diversity, focus on our commonality, and together tear down the mighty walls of injustice ».

Cynthia McKinney is an outspoken leader for peace, human rights, and justice. As a result of questioning her congressional colleagues about the lack of full investigation after September 11 attacks, a retaliatory campaign successfully unseated her for one term, but in 2004 she was easily reelected. In her first term, she got legislation passed to extend health benefits for Vietnam War veteran victims of Agent Orange and sponsored legislation to end the use of depleted-uranium weapons. As a ranking member of the Human Rights Subcommittee, she prompted the UN to investigate the Rwanda genocide. (Read all on 1000peacewomen 2005).

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Cynthia McKinney – USA

She worked for the US Congress, the US House of Repr., House Armed Services Committee.

Honors and recognition: McKinney has been featured in a full-length motion picture titled American Blackout. On April 14, 2006, she received the key to the city of Sarasota, Florida and was doubly honored when the city named April 8 as « Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney Day » in Sarasota. On June 14, 2000, Rep. McKinney was honored when part of Memorial Drive, a major thoroughfare running through her district, was renamed « Cynthia McKinney Parkway. » Memorial Drive leads from south Atlanta to Stone Mountain. Her father had previously been honored when a portion of Interstate 285 in Atlanta was dedicated as « Billy McKinney Parkway. »

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Chhing Lamu Sherpa – Nepal

Linked with Mountain Spirit MS.

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

She says: « I believe that it is important to contribute to the root of a tree for good fruits ».

She says also: “Appreciative Inquiry changed me. It has become a part of my life, my family, and everything I do. Once I started to say things positively, life has become comfortable and easy” … and: , “You must not only teach how to catch fish, but you must do things. You must act!”

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Chhing Lamu Sherpa – Nepal

She works for Plan Nepal, and for Mountain Spirit.
She is member of ‘Imagine Nepal.org‘.

Read: ‘ … on PRA and Participation in Nepal‘, 52 p., March 24, 2000.

For the past two decades, Chhing Lamu Sherpa (born 1960) has played a pivotal role in empowering women and extremely marginalized groups in eastern Nepal. As an educated professional woman working to improve the lives of poor and deprived mountain communities, she is a role model for other members of Nepal’s Sherpa community, an ethnic minority living off the rural mountainous areas, often as expedition guides. She had to face ridicule when she started to go to school – Sherpa was an « old » 17 years of age.

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John Pilger – Australia & England

Linked with CBNRM.Net.

First read: Iran, A War Is Coming, by John Pilger, February 3, 2007 – The United States is planning what will be a catastrophic attack on Iran … (full text).

John Pilger (born October 9, 1939) is an Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker from Sydney, primarily based in London, England. He told, in an address at Columbia University, on 14 April 2006: ”During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. ‘I have to tell you,’ said their spokesman, ‘that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don’t have that. What’s the secret? How do you do it?’ « . (wikipedia).

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John Pilger – Australia & England

Read: War with Iran is coming.

He says also: « what I wanted to do – and I’ve tried to do this in most of my films – is not just simply assault people’s emotions… you saw that… it’s not difficult to do, but when you start to make sense of something then you stray into what’s called the political area ». (full text).

Journalist John Pilger told the crowd of the majority of the white population of Australia would not be able to retain their nationhood until they recognised the Aboriginal nation as first in the country. He linked the Hickey case to the prosecution of a Queensland policeman charged over an Aboriginal death in custody on Palm island. Police made no arrests. (full text).

He has also written for various French, Italian, Scandinavian, Canadian and Japanese newspapers and periodicals, among others, and has contributed to the BBC’s news service. He is on the advisory board of UKWatch.

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Boualaphet Chounthavong – Laos

Linked with Village Focus International VFI. – She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « I enjoy my work and am happy when people feel proud of our work ». And: « The climate becomes drier, unlike the past when rainfall was consistent, now we are suffering from drought, and lack of water. Many wild animals that cannot find food start to roam around and eat the villager’s produce. If we do not take care of our own food, well, all the animals, wild boar, barking deer and other deer will eat it all ».

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Boualaphet Chounthavong – Laos

She works for Village Focus International VFI. And with The Community-Based Natural Resource Management Network CBNRM.Net.

Her bio.

Boualaphet Chounthavong was born in 1967 in Salawan province, southern Laos, at the height of the Vietnam War. Her father was a teacher who was promoted after the war to a high-ranking post in the Ministry of Education. Her mother was a member of the Laos Women Union. Studying on a government scholarship, Boualaphet obtained her degree in medicine from the National University of Medicine in Laos in 1993.

But instead of opening a high profile medical practice in the capital, which should have earned her a convenient life as a physician, she decided to return to her rural village in Salawan province. She chose to work in a very remote and backward neighborhood in the rural areas.

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Elizabeth Neuenschwander – Switzerland

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

She says: « We should remember that we will not live forever, that at one point we will pass away. And therefore, it is useless to accumulate too much for ourselves. It is better to create something valuable ».

She says also: « At home, we were never rich. And still, I realized very early on that we are all quite wealthy in Switzerland. I am convinced that we do not need everything for ourselves. So let us share with other people, living in other places that are less privileged. We should not leave people there in poverty and misery. With our wealth and know-how, we can help them to help themselves. » Under this motto, Elizabeth Neuenschwander has been working for almost 50 years and still does so today.

And she says: « I always worked best when they let me do my job and nobody asked how I did it. I went with an order and strived towards my own goals. That is my talent: working on a grassroots level where you have direct contact with the people, where you can teach them the most efficient and practical way to achieve something. That is the way I was taught, that is what made my professional life successful ».

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Elizabeth Neuenschwander – Switzerland

Elizabeth Neuenschwander has spent almost 50 years of her life working abroad. She became a dressmaker and left Emmental, a remote Swiss region, at age 19. Since the late 1950s, she has worked in developing countries for different organizations: with Tibetan refugees in Nepal and India, as a nutrition advisor in Biafra and Nigeria. Those were only a few stations on her way from a dressmaker to a project manager. Since 1986, she has worked in Quetta, Pakistan, where she founded self-help projects for Afghan refugees. In 2001, the Canton of Berne gave her the renowned Trudi-Schlatter Award.

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Hermann Scheer – Germany

Linked with Statements at the World Future Council, (Listen to his own statement there), and with .

He is President of EUROSOLAR, General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy WCRE, President of the International Parliamentary Forum on Renewable Energies, Member of the German Bundestag (english, deutsch), Publicist and author. He is honoured with the Right Livelihood Award 1999, with the Solar World Prize 1998, the Alternative Nobel Prize 1999 (mentionned here), the World Prize on Bioenergy 2000 (mentionned here), and the World Wind Energy Award 2004.

His english Homepage, and his Homepage in german.

He says: « Renewable energies are inexhaustible. They do not destroy the environment. They are available everywhere. Their use facilitates solidarity with future generations. They secure the future of humankind ». And: « … in 100 years people will say: the work is done, we are living in the Solar Age. »

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Hermann Scheer – Germany

Listen to his 3 videos on Big Picture.

Next Events:

China Alternative Energy 2007 Conference, March 26th – 27th, 2007, Beijing. (full text). Registration, Newsletter.

Ukraine: Conference on Renewable Energy, organized by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, April 4th – 6th, 2007, Kiev/Ukraine. (full text). (In russian).

World Sustainable Energy Forum (Homepage), July 2nd – 6th, 2007, Lucerne/Switzerland, (Registration for the Lucerne FUEL CELL FORUM 2007).

9th EUROSOLAR Conference ‘The farmer as energy supplier’, April 16th-17th, 2007, Potsdam. (full text, select english or german).

Hermann Scheer was born in 1944 and has a Ph. D. in economics and social sciences … He believes that the continuation of current patterns of energy use will be environmentally catasrophic and the end of human civilisation.

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Kamal Nazer Yasin – Iran

Kamal Nazer Yasin is a pseudonym for a freelance journalist specializing in Iranian affairs.

Undaunted Iran forges ahead with nuclear program: Iran presses forward with its nuclear program, brushing off threats of sanctions from the West and a possible airstrike on its facilities by Israel, as Iranian authorities gamble on their foes promising more bark than bite. By Kamal Nazer Yasin for EurasiaNet, Febr. 22, 2007, on Internat. Relations and Security Network ISN. (full text).

Read: IRAN, RAFSANJANI PRESSES POLITICAL OFFENSIVE AGAINST PRESIDENT, STRESSING MODERATION, by Kamal Nazer Yasin Febr. 21, 2007. Excerpt: … « This is the first time after the [presidential election] victory of the neo-conservatives over a year and a half ago that an individual from Iran’s political class has articulated a coherent set of policy statements in direct opposition to the present government, » noted a Tehran political scientist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The political scientist added that opposition to Ahmadinejad’s policies had been rising, but, until now, presidential opponents lacked a figure around which they could rally. « Many people from elite circles are unhappy with the president’s stand on a range of topics – from Iran’s nuclear program to his denial of the Holocaust to his economic policy. What [Rafsanjani] has done is to tap into this sense of unease and use it to rally all the disaffected factions under his own leadership » … (full text). (same in russian).

FEAR OF ISOLATION PROMPTS IRANIAN SHI’AS TO REACH OUT TO SUNNIS, by Kamal Nazer Yasin Febr. 7, 2007. (full text). Same on: SperoNews, Febr. 12, 2007.

Read: FOES TAKE AIM AT AHMADINEJAD, by Kamal Nazer Yasin Jan. 30, 2007 (text).

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Sorry, no photo of Kamal Nazer Yasin (a pseudonym), also no bio nor any other personal information can be available.

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Manfred Max-Neef – Chile

Linked with The Max-Neef Model of Human-Scale Development, with the Centre for Development Alternatives CEPAUR, Chile, with WHY ARE WE WHERE WE ARE? and with Statements at the World Future Council.

He classifies the fundamental human needs as: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation(in the sense of leisure, time to reflect, or idleness), creation, identity and freedom. Needs are also defined according to the existential categories of being, having, doing and interacting, and from these dimensions, a 36 cell matrix is developed which can be filled with examples of satisfiers for those needs. (full text, scroll down).

He says: « There are two separate languages now – the language of economics and the language of ecology, and they do not converge. The language of economics is attractive, and remains so, because it is politically appealing. It offers promises. It is precise, authoritative, aesthetically pleasing. Policy-makers apply the models, and if they don’t work there is a tendency to conclude that it is reality that is playing tricks. The assumption is not that the models are wrong but that they must be applied with greater rigour… While the many deficiencies and limitations of the theory that supports the old paradigm must be overcome (mechanistic interpretations and inadequate indicators of well-being, among others), a theoretical body for the new paradigm must still be constructed ». (text).

Listen to his 3 videos on Big-Picture.
Listen to his video on World Future Council.

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Manfred Max-Neef – Chile

Read: The Barefoot Economist, transcript of the Broadcast on Saturday 9/03/2002.
Read: The Natural Step’s fourth Condition for Sustainability and Manfred Max-Neef’s basic Needs Analysis.
Read: The beat of a different drummer, same in spanish.
Read: Report: Transdisciplinarity in Progress.
Read: Economic growth versus genuine progress, an obsession with GDP growth could backfire.
Contemplate: Human Needs Graphic;
Read: Guest Lecture on Sustainable Wealth Creation.

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Bihodjal Rahimova – Tajikistan

Linked with UNIFEM, and with ‘Centra Asia – Tadjikistan – Dushanbe‘ on our AEHRF pictures blog.

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

She says: « My dream is to strengthen peace in my country forever, to make the life of women and children free of violence, to help my people surmount this transition period, and survive the economic crisis ».

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Bihodjal Rahimova – Tajikistan

She works for UNIFEM.

Bihojal Rahimova (born 1941) is a national adviser of the Unifem Project « Rights for the Land and Economic Safety of Rural Women » in Tajikistan. Owing to her efforts there have been significant changes in land reform legislation as well as in the state program on equal rights and possibilities for men and women. She pays special attention to the issues of access to land and credit for rural women. She brings to this task long experience as an important political figure in the Soviet Union and a profound concern for the rights of women. (Read all on 1000peacewomen 2005).

Go to Political Heroes.

links:

Women organizations in Tajikistan; and its directory;

Political heroes, (show them all);

Country Briefing Paper—Women and Gender Relations in Tajikistan.

Sorry, I can get no other information in english on Bihodjal Rahimova – Tajikistan.