Mois : février 2007

Linked with A Mad Dream.

He says: ”We should not confuse ideology with message, nor message with meaning. The message belongs in part – that of logic – to ideology, and in the other part – that of irreason – to meaning. The logical message is almost always evil, lying, hypocritical even when very sincere. Who could doubt my sincerity when I say that the message of Salò is the denunciation of the anarchy of power and the inexistence of history? Nonetheless put this way such a message is evil, lying, hypocritical, that is logical in the sense of that same logic which finds that power is not at all anarchic and which believes that history does exist. The part of the message which belongs to the meaning of the film is immensely more real because it also includes all that the author does not know, that is, the boundlessness of his own social, historical restrictions. But such a message can’t be delivered. It can only be left to silence and to the text. What finally now is the meaning of a work? It is its form. The message therefore is formalistic; and precisely for that reason, loaded infinitely with all possible content provided it is coherent – in the structural sense ». (full text).

Read: Oedipus Rex by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Look at: Italian pictures show on pasolini.net.

Pier Paolo Pasolini – Italia (March 5, 1922 – November 2, 1975)

Restoring Pasolini: Thirty years later, new questions arise about who murdered the Italian cultural genius.
Pasolini death inquiry reopened.

Success and charges: In 1954 Pasolini, who now worked for the literature section of the Italian State radio, left his teaching job and moved to the Monteverde quarter and published La meglio gioventù, his first important collection of dialect poems. His first novel, Ragazzi di vita, was published in 1955.

Continuer la lecture de « Pier Paolo Pasolini – Italia (March 5, 1922 – November 2, 1975) »

Linked with The Voice of the Turtle, with Reflections on an Emancipatory Labour Internationalism … , with Surpassing the binary opposition between reform and revolution.

He says (about Archaic left challenges … ): ”… It is a counter-hegemonic movement from the period of national-industrial-colonial capitalism. This was a machine-age capitalism, and it gave rise to mechanical interpretations of Marxism. MR belongs, more specifically, to the ‘Marxist-Leninist’ (Maoist) tendency and is linked (in more than a cyberspace sense) with the International League of Peoples Struggles, (ILPS) and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). This movement considers discussion and analysis of the rights and wrongs of globalisation to be a derogation from a 100-year-old Leninist theory of imperialism. It is therefore suspicious of or hostile to the anti-globalisation movement. The only concession it will make to the new movement is that it has managed to capture a widespread and multifarious discontent internationally. It therefore becomes a suitable object for penetration and/or competition. This movement pursues a Marxism of binary opposition, a Manichean Marxism with oppositions … « . (full long text).

Read: Global Social Labour Movement, Updated June 30, 2006.

Peter Waterman – England

Read: From Decent Work to The Liberation of Time from Work.

Abstract: The traditional international union organisations are currently engaged in a series of ‘social partnership’ initiatives at global level. Prominent amongst these is that addressed to ‘global governance’. This project comes from outside and above the unions, is addressed to the existing hegemonic interstate instances, and is carried out primarily by lobbying.

Continuer la lecture de « Peter Waterman – England »

Linked with Fair Traide Certified (TransFairUSA), with ashoka, and with Fair Trade and Human Rights.

Paul Rice is President and CEO of TransFair USA, the only Fair Trade certifier in the United States. In 2000 he received the Ashoka Fellowship for his pioneering work in fair trade and in 2002 he was named by the Klaus Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship as one of the world’s top 40 Social Entrepreneurs. He has authored several publications including « Sustainable Coffee at the Crossroads. » Paul Rice talks about how fair trade can help align the interests of corporations and small farmers without sacrificing profitability. As companies look to reduce costs in an increasingly competitive world, the welfare of small producers can be marginalized. Rice describes how fair trade can empower poor farmers by giving them the opportunity to trade directly with buyers and earn a better price for their produce. Find the link to his video/audio on the same swebpage.

He says: ”That’s simple: we’re the only certifier of Fair Trade products in the US. In the coffee area, we have signed agreements with almost 300 coffee companies, including Starbucks, Sara Lee and Green Mountain ». (full text).

Paul Rice – USA

He works for Fair Traide Certified (TransFairUSA).

See Paul Rice, on heroes.net, on Schwab Foundation, on ashhoka.org.

Click on this web page for his 7 minutes audio.

Continuer la lecture de « Paul Rice – USA »

Linked with the Avery Institute for Social Change, with An Open Letter to my Sisters, with The Health Care Crisis … , and with the National Black Women’s Health Imperative.

Byllye Yvonne Avery (born 1937) is a health care activist in the United States of America. She has worked to improve the welfare of African-American women by creating the National Black Women’s Health Imperative in 1981. She has received the MacArthur Foundation’s Fellowship for Social Contribution and the Gustav O. Lienhard Award for the Advancement of Health Care from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science, among other awards. Avery was born in DeLand, Florida. She studied psychology at Talledega College, and earned an MA degree from the University of Florida in 1969. In 1995 Avery received a L.H.D. from Bates College. Avery produced the documentary film ‘On Becoming a Woman, Mothers and Daughters Talking to Each Other’ (1987). It features African-American women and their daughters talking about menstruation and related topics, such as sex and love. She has said that, when her own daughter menstruated for the first time, Avery threw a party for her. (full text).

Listen here to her many videos.

Byllye Avery – USA

She works for the National Black Women’s Health Imperative, and also for the Avery Institute for Social Change.
In 1974, she co-founded the Gainesville Women’s Health Center, a first-trimester abortion center. Four years later, she co-founded Birthplace, an alternative birthing center where families could deliver their babies with the aid of a certified midwife.

She says: « Black women all participated in a conspiracy of silence » … and: « white women were defining health in their own perspective, which was usually focused on reproductive issues. We needed to come together as black women to define the issues most affecting black women. »

While Avery was knee-deep in women’s health issues, however, she realized a significant group of people were underrepresented: black women.

Continuer la lecture de « Byllye Avery – USA »

Linked with Is Equality Passé? with Kicking Away the Ladder, and with … Institutions and Economic Development … .

Ha-Joon Chang, born 1963 in South Korea, is one of the world’s foremost heterodox economists specialising in development economics. Trained at the University of Cambridge, where he currently works as a Reader in the Political Economy of Development, Chang is the author of several influential policy books, including 2002’s « Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, » He has served as a consultant to the World Bank and the European Investment Bank as well as to Oxfam and various United Nations agencies. He is also a fellow at the D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. Chang is among the most widely cited economists in the development literature, especially in articles and books that are critical of neo-liberalism. In « Kicking Away the Ladder » (which won the 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize), Chang argued that all major developed countries used interventionist economic policies in order to get rich and then tried to forbid other countries from doing similarly. (full text).

Read: why developing countries need tariffs.

Ha-Joon Chang – Korea & England

He says: ”In the orthodox literature, it is uncritically assumed that a stronger protection of property rights is always better. However, this cannot be true as a general proposition. The fact that some protection of property rights is good does not mean that more of it is always better.

Continuer la lecture de « Ha-Joon Chang – South Korea & England »