Mois : octobre 2007

Index October 2007

Spasenija Moro – Croatia

Linked with Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights, and with Global Partnership for the Prevention of armed conflict GPPAC.

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

She says: « My engagement in peace activities is based on an effort and a wish to bring about real changes in the manner of thinking by opening a dialogue between the parties in conflict ».

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Spasenija Moro – Croatia

She works for the Center for Peace, Nonviolence, and Human Rights (named on sourcewatch.org).

When the booming announcement of war in the last decade disrupted the peaceful and stable rhythm of her life, Spasenija Moro did not abandon her optimism. She believed that war could not really happen in the former Yugoslavia. She believed in peaceful solutions for all problems.

Though she knew little about the techniques of nonviolent communication, by nature she was inclined to peaceful solutions. She missed social engagements and places for interaction that could be an alternative to war as a means to changing local society.

The war began for her personally in the most painful way. Since she had never been actively involved in politics, she could not understand politicians’ behavior. She believed that all of them were humanists and that they were socially engaged and sensitive people who would put the general-well being before anything else. Which for her meant solving the accumulating problems of the humiliated, oppressed, and degraded.

She started to talk openly about the injustice and repression that had taken place after World War II. All the problems that earlier had been swept under the carpet now flared up as a threatening fire that could consume the entire region.

Advancing signs of war affected her deeply. She did not want to accept war as a solution to the conflict, but her voice in the wilderness, could not stop the floods of anger and hate rolling in, together with sounds of tanks and explosions. That painful confrontation with the destruction of physical and mental systems made her feel empty inside.

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Mina Ahadi – Iran

Linked with National Secular Society NSS.

Mina Ahadi (born 1956) is an Iranian Communist political activist and current member of the Central Committee and Politburo of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran. She is the main figure of the International Committee against executions and International Committee against stoning. She is also a member of the German Central Council of Ex-Muslims. Mina Ahadi was born in Abhar, Iran to an Iranian Azeri family. Her husband, who was also a political activist, was executed on the date of the couple’s anniversary. His execution became her motivation to fight against capital punishment. She is currently living and working in Germany and recently helped to gain the freedom of Nazanin Fateh in Iran. Due to death-threats against her, she has been living under police protection from the moment of her public appearance as the chairwoman of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims. On 20 October 2007 she was awarded the Secularist of the Year prize by the UK’s National Secular Society. She is the mother of two daughters. (full text).

Die offizielle Webseite von Mina Agadi, in persian & auf deutsch.

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Mina Ahadi – Iran

She says: « The only way is to apply sanctions to countries with the death penalty … According to Amnesty International, the number of minors sentenced to the death penalty reached 71. However, I have data which says that 250 teenagers, including 17 citizens of Afghanistan, were sentenced to the death penalty in Iranian prisons ». (full text).

Mina was spokeswoman of the International Campaign in Defense of Women’s Rights in Iran. She has been invited by Amnesty international several times to attend their annual meetings and address their members. She is a well- known figure in the movement for women’s rights and has had many interviews with leading newspapers and TV programs in Europe. (full text).

Video: Mina Ahadi, 8 march, women’s right, Islam veil, hejab hijab, 19.17 min., March 9, 2007.

Video ‘Secularist of the Year presentation, 2007’, part 1, 9.59 min., and part 2, 9.59 min., and part 3, 10.11 min.

See all her videos on Google video-search.

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Vijay Prashad – India & USA

Linked with The Nuke Deal Is Dead.

He says: « The clash of civilization is a tired approach to the contradictions that we face, as is Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld (Tariq Ali’s book from Verso The Clash of Fundamentalisms will take the piss out of this approach, I’m sure). My own sense, and I’ve actually worked this out in a book for Leftword called War Against the Planet (released in Calcutta in the first week of Feb. 2002) is that we are in a condition of McJihad, where the forces of capitalist globalization and those of retro-Islam and retro-Hinduism and retro-Christianity seem to emerge from the very same flat approach to our current political, economic and social crises. Whereas the fat cats and the running dogs sap the ability of people to transform their rights into reality, the forces of McJihad offer tired eschatological visions of a heavenly future (the American Dream, Paradise) that is without a program for actual social change. Which brings us to polyculturalism: Firstly, we need to get out of the idea that the « West » is the fount of all that is good in the world, that it is the place from which all reason and justice comes. Secondly, we need to see that the world as formed by interconnections between that zone known as the « West » and the vast Rest, and that the cultures that we see in motion around us are dynamically generated by the various and complex interactions, which later are denied in bad faith in the service of nationalism. So, these two facets of polyculturalism may, I think, help us think out of the rhetoric of Good and Evil, Us and Them, etc. … (full interview text).

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Vijay Prashad – USA

Vijay Prashad is Professor and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Ct. His most recent books are The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New Press, November 2006) and (with Teo Ballve) Dispatches from Latin America: Experiments Against Neoliberalism (South End Press, October 2006). He is the author of ten other books, including two chosen by the Village Voice as books of the year (Karma of Brown Folk, 2000; Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting, 2001). He is on the board of the Center for Third World Organizing, United For a Fair Economy, and the National Priorities Project. He writes a monthly column for Frontline, India, and occasionally for Counterpunch.
See whole text here.

Read him in books and articles: his newest book The Darker Nations, A People’s History of the Third World (New Press People’s History), by Vijay Prashad (Author), Howard Zinn (Series Editor); ; A Perilous Way to Socialism, Dec. 16/17, 2006; Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting, Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity, by Vijay Prashad, Beacon Press, November 2001, 256 pages; The Karma of Brown Folk, by Vijay Prashad, University of Minnesota Press, 248 pages; Cindy Sheehan’s Tragedy is Real, The Rosa Parks of the Anti-War Movement; – see also his publications on amazon; on ZNet Commentaries; on Google book-search; on Googles blog-search; on Google Scholar-search.

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James Bovard – USA

Linked with Are Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners?
with The Future of Freedom Foundation FFF, and with Breaking Down an Innocent Man.

James Bovard, who serves as a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation, is a frequent contributor to Playboy, American Spectator, and Investor’s Business Daily. He has also written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reader’s Digest, New Republic, Washington Post, Washington Times, and Newsweek … (full bio at FFF).

He writes: Tens of thousands of innocent Americans are stopped each month at police checkpoints that treat every driver as a criminal. These checkpoints, supposedly started to target drunk drivers, have expanded to give police more intrusive power over citizens in many areas. The demonization of alcohol is leading to a growing nullification of the constitutional rights of anyone suspected of drinking — or anyone who might have had a drink anytime recently. In 1925, the Supreme Court declared. It would be intolerable and unreasonable if a prohibition agent were authorized to stop every automobile on the chance of finding liquor, and thus subject all persons lawfully using the highways to the inconvenience and indignity of such a search. But as the 20th century progressed, judges and prosecutors gained a more rarefied understanding of the Bill of Rights … (full very long text of October 26, 2007).

Look at his personal blog.

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James Bovard – USA

Listen to his 7 videos: Conference, part 1/7 to 7/7, July 18, 2007. To be found within other videos on his Google video-search.

His publications
on Google scholar-search;
on Google book-search;
on Googe blog-search;
on The Future of Freedom Foundation FFF;
on Lew Rockwell.com;
on amazon;
on wikipedia.

Listen to his longer audio ‘Plundering the People‘ on ‘Foundation for Economic Education’, March 12, 2005.

He says: « Americans’ liberty is perishing beneath the constant growth of government power. Federal, state and local government’s are confiscating citizens’ property, trampling their rights, and decimating their opportunities more than ever before…. American liberty can still be rescued from the encroachments of government. The first step to saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose unless fundamental political changes occur ». (full text).

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Helen John – England

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

She says: « Resistance toward all militarism has been the most important development that has shaped my personal philosophy. For these life-changing gifts I shall remain eternally grateful ».

She says also: « The so-called Space Based Infra Red System SBIRS is supposed to observe the flight path of all missiles in the world and locate enemy missiles, which can then be shot down by killer missiles. Thus the installation would become a foreward station for the planned missile shield over the United States, together with the US center Fylingdales in Yorkshire, and the US base Thule in Greenland. President Reagan initiated the project under the name Strategic Defense Initiative SDI, and President Bush junior terminated the inconvenient ABM Treaty between the USA and Russia to continue it under the name National Missile Defense NMD. Scientists warn that it will not work purely for reasons of physics. Only a few of the trial tests have been successful so far, and then only because the coordinates of the enemy missile were made known beforehand ».

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Helen John – England

She works for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament CND, and for WoMenwith Hill WwH.

The former midwife Helen John fights in Great Britain with wit and civil disobedience against Star Wars and the world’s largest US espionage center.

On Monday, December 15th, 2003, Helen John is lying on Route A 59, which passes by Menwith Hill in the British county of Yorkshire. Her arms are folded under her head, and she stretches out as if the ice-cold asphalt were an inviting bed. Before and behind her sit or stand two dozen other blockade members, from Yorkshire, London and Manchester, Sweden and Germany. ”Close the base!” they shout, again and again. The US base, identified outside as a ”Royal Air Force” station, is run by the National Security Agency (NSA), the US secret service branch, whose tens of thousands of staff members are responsible for international eavesdropping. The base is part of the ”Echelon” monitoring system which, shrouded in mystery, has been run jointly since 1948 by the US, Great Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, although only the USA has access to all data produced.

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Ermira Mehmeti – Macedonia

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

It is said about her: « Ermira Mehmeti saw the opportunity to help rebuild the country, starting from rebuilding the relations between ordinary people from grassroots level to the top. It was an opportunity she did not miss ».

Vecer, Macedonia: Media boycott against Democratic Union of Integration, by FOCUS News Agency, Sept. 29 2007. Skopje – As a sign of protest against Tuesday’s incidents when in the Macedonian parliament a security guard of the Democratic Union of Integration /DUI/ attacked a journalist of the A1 television channel Lirim Dulovi, all journalists, photo reporters and operators boycotted on Friday the protest staged by the DUI in Skopje under the motto “Stop state violence”, the Macedonian Vecer newspaper writes. What is interesting is that Ahmeti’s party had found out about the media intentions beforehand, and had hard tried to dissuade them. Ahead of the protest DUI Spokesperson Ermira Mehmeti promised to the journalists they would receive an apology and asked them not to leave. Still the media did not give up their intention and left the protest the moment when the latest acts of violence against media representatives were condemned, and the apology was made in Albanian only, the Vecer notes. The newspaper adds Lirim Dulovi had asked through the media DUI leader Ali Ahmeti to publicly condemn the attack. (full text, Sept. 29, 2007).

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Ermira Mehmeti – Macedonia

She works for the Democratic Union for Integration (see them on wikipedia).

Ermira Mehmeti is the spokesperson for the Democratic Union for Integration, which emerged following the 2001 conflict in the country. Its leaders are those who fought for more rights and equal treatment of ethnic Albanians and Macedonians. Ermira is working to bring together youth of the two major communities that were in conflict. Her message is that peace and democracy are the crucial values that can bring the country into Europe, that diversity makes the country stronger and should be the corner stone of this young democracy and that reconciliation must be promoted.

Ermira Mehmeti is the symbol of young and emancipated Albanian women living in Macedonia with clear perspectives on their future. She has become the voice of moderation of the young educated generation of ethnic Albanians living in Macedonia. The myth of the uneducated and primitive Albanian community living in the country was broken as she emerged on the political scene.

Ermira is the daughter of a retired lawyer and a social worker working for the Macedonian Red Cross. Her father was a political prisoner in the times of the Communist regime in the Former Yugoslavia. Her mother has spent her life helping those in need, especially families that need social assistance and children without care.

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Ashanti Alston Omowali – USA

Linked with Institute for Anarchist Studies IAS.

Ashanti Alston Omowali is an anarchist activist, speaker, and writer, and former member of the Black Panther Party. Even though the party no longer exists, Alston sometimes refers to himself as a Black Panther, and sometimes as « the @narchist Panther », a term he coined in his popular @narchist Panther Zine series. He was also member of the Black Liberation Army, and spent more than a decade in prison after government forces captured him and the official court system convicted him of armed robbery.

Alston, like most anarchists, disputes the moral issues of property and terms his activity in the BLA « bank expropriation ». Alston is the former northeast coordinator for Critical Resistance, a current co-chair of the National Jericho Movement (to free U.S. political prisoners), a member of pro-Zapatista people-of-color U.S.-based Estación Libre, and is on the board of the Institute for Anarchist Studies … (full text).

See his personal website ‘@narchist Panther‘.

He says: « Either you respect people’s capacities to think for themselves, to govern themselves, to creatively devise their own best ways to make decisions, to be accountable, to relate, problem-solve, break-down isolation and commune in a thousand different ways … OR: you dis-respect them. You dis-respect ALL of us » (on his Homepage).

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Ashanti Alston Omowali – USA

Listen to his video of 2004, 2.03 min. (strange, if you search videos on YouTube or Google with his name, the search-result shows ‘no video found’ !?!).

He says also: « Many classical anarchists regarded anarchism as a body of elemental truths that merely needed to be revealed to the world and believed, people would become anarchists once exposed to the irresistible logic of the idea. This is one of the reasons they tended to be didactic.

Fortunately the lived practice of the anarchist movement is much richer than that. Few ‘convert’ in such a way: it is much more common for people to embrace anarchism slowly, as they discover that it is relevant to their lived experience and amenable to their own insights and concerns.

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Jamal Saadeddine Ibrahim – Egypt

Linked with The American Muslim TAM, and with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy.

He is Deputy for Kafr Al Sheikh, Egypt, Member of the Egyptian Peopl’s Assembly.

Websites and text in arabic language: Saadeddine Ibrahim; Arab Observers – Islam and Politics; Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy CSID.

Civil-Political Rights (scroll down): … The case of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a prominent Egyptian sociologist and director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies can be viewed as a « critical test » of American policy on civil rights in the Arab world for two reasons – he holds duel
Egyptian and American citizenship, and his Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies once received funding from NED. If ever there was a political prisoner who should have met American conditions for contentious public diplomacy, it is Ibrahim … (full text, ).

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Jamal Saadeddine Ibrahim – Egypt

He works for the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy CSID.

In return, US officials, including President Bush himself, set about to express their rejection of domestic conditions in Egypt, including instances such as the arrest and trial of some political activists, as in the cases of Dr. Ayman Nour at present, and, formerly, Saadeddine Ibrahim. (full long text, Oct. 17, 2007).

Egypt Update, 03 July 2007, by Pieter Koekenbier.

Egypt’s jailing of American-Egyptian civil-society activist Saad Eddine Ibrahim triggered condemnation from Western governments, international media, and human-rights groups, but the Egyptian press showed little sympathy for the 62-year-old academic’s plight. (full text, Dec. 2001).
CONFERENCE CSID, August 27, 2007: aAs you know, we just organized our 6th Annual conference on April 22-23 at the Marriott Wardman hotel in Washington, DC. The conference was attended by over 200 participants from many countries, including Turkey, the Philippines, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, the UK, and of course the US. Keynote speakers included … Saadeddine Ibrahim, from Egypt … (full text, May 6, 2005).

Look at: The American Muslim TAM, and: Muslim Voices Against Extremism and Terrorism.

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Rebecca MacKinnon – USA

Linked with The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

Rebecca MacKinnon (born 1969) is a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo, before leaving television to become a blogger and co-founder of Global Voices Online. She is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Center and lives in Hong Kong. From 2004-06 she was a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (full text).

Watch her video: Video: Rebecca MacKinnon on Online Journalism, Oct. 16, 2007.

Read: Thomas Friedman gets the middle finger in the Middle Kingdom, Sept. 9, 2007.

Find Rebecca MacKinnon’s Google video-search.

Listen to her audio on CDN.

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Rebecca MacKinnon – USA

Look at her personal blog.

Read: Chinese Cell Phone Breaches North Korean Hermit Kingdom, February 3rd, 2005.

DIGITAL AGE – Are Bloggers as Trustworthy as Mainstream Media? by R. MacKinno, 28.54 min., 26.03.2006.

She says (about China and the internet): There’s a real contradiction that’s difficult to explain to the West and the outside world about China and about the Internet. On the one hand, you have a lot of efforts – and fairly successful efforts – to control content on the Internet and control what people can access, yet on the other hand, you have this contradiction that at the same time the space for conversation thanks to the Internet has grown tremendously in China », MacKinnon told the Foreign Correspondents Club. (full text, Sep 27, 2007).

Read: Hong Kong, GV Editor Oiwan Lam faces court battle over Flickr photo, by Rebecca MacKinnon, July 16th, 2007.

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