Sook-Im Kim – South Korea

Linked with Korean Women’s Association United , and with human trafficking.org.

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

Sook-Im Kim began empowering women to make a difference in Korea in the late ’70s, in what she calls the « Dark Ages for women’s movements. » In the face of military dictatorship, a divided country, and an inflated national defense budget, women’s voices were silenced. Understanding that women’s welfare was at stake, Sook-Im pioneered the women’s peace movement by organizing the radical group, Korean Association of Christian Women, for whom she and her husband built a church and kindergarten. For 26 years, Sook-Im has modeled leadership in her quest for peace.

She says: « Female-oriented peaceful movements, measures, and mind have guided me into a vision for resolving the conflict in the Korean peninsula as a mediator of peace ».

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Sook-Im Kim – South Korea

She works for the Peace and Reunification Committee of the Korea Women’s Association,
for the Unification and Peace in Korean Women’s United Association,
and for the Korea Campaign to Ban Landmines (named on Landmine Monitor).

The daughter of a wealthy businessman, Sook-Im Kim was always encouraged by her parents to become socially active. But a quiet reader and musician, Kim preferred to keep to herself. She enrolled in Seoul’s Women’s University to study literature, and there her life took a sharp turn. As a jazz pianist and dancer, her performance of a masque dance caught the attention of the military police. Believing it was a form of government resistance, they sent Kim to prison.
Ironically, it was at this point that her true resistance began.

She became very ill in prison and an operation on her spine ended her days of dancing. But a new kind of dance was born. Upon her release from prison, she became an activist, fired by her first-hand understanding of an unjust political system.

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Michel Onfray – France

Michel Onfray (born January 1, 1959 in Argentan, Orne, France) is a French philosopher. Born to a family of Norman farmers, he graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy. He taught this subject to senior students at a technical high school in Caen between 1983 and 2002, before establishing the Université populaire de Caen on a free-of-charge basis, for which he wrote a manifesto in 2004 (La communauté philosophique). (full text).

He says: « There is in fact a multitude of ways to practice philosophy, but out of this multitude, the dominant historiography picks one tradition among others and makes it the truth of philosophy: that is to say the idealist, spiritualist lineage compatible with the Judeo-Christian world view. From that point on, anything that crosses this partial – in both senses of the word – view of things finds itself dismissed. This applies to nearly all non-Western philosophies, Oriental wisdom in particular, but also sensualist, empirical, materialist, nominalist, hedonistic currents and everything that can be put under the heading of “anti-Platonic philosophy”. Philosophy that comes down from the heavens is the kind that – from Plato to Levinas by way of Kant and Christianity – needs a world behind the scenes to understand, explain and justify this world. The other line of force rises from the earth because it is satisfied with the given world, which is already so much ». (full text).

Son site internet français.

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Michel Onfray – France

Read: Jean Meslier and ‘The Gentle Inclination of Nature’, by Michel Onfray, translated by Marvin Mandell, on New Politics, Winter 2006.

From art and politics to bioethics, religion, the internet and the odyssey of tea, French philosopher Michel Onfrey focuses on a multitude of issues that concern contemporary humanity in his numerous books and lectures. For Mr Onfray, philosophy must be effective on the existential plane. (full text).

Onfray believes that there is no philosophy without psychoanalysis. An adamant atheist, he considers religion to be indefensible. He regards himself as being part of the tradition of individualist anarchism, a tradition that he claims is at work throughout the entire history of philosophy and that he is seeking to revive amidst modern schools of philosophy that he feels are cynical and epicurean. His writings celebrate hedonism, reason and atheism. He endorsed the French Revolutionary Communist League and its candidate for the French presidency, Olivier Besancenot in the 2002 election, although this is somewhat at odds with the libertarian socialism he advocates in his writings.[citation needed] In 2007, he endorsed José Bové – but eventually voted for Olivier Besancenot – , and conducted a famous interview with ideological enemy Nicolas Sarkozy for Philosophie Magazine. Onfray traced back the birth of a philosophic community such as the « université populaire » (folk high school) to the results of the French presidential election, 2002: it is committed to deliver high-level knowledge to the masses, as opposed to the more common approach of vulgarizing philosophic concepts through easy-to-read books such as « Philosophy for Well-being » ( Declared during Printemps des Universités populaires, Lyon, June 23-25th 2006). (full text).

Listen to the audio of abc australia: Michel Onfray with Waleed Aly and Rabbi Gersh Zylberman.

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Kumiko Yokoi – Japan

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

Kumiko Yokoi uses the power of music to spread messages of peace, dignity, and hope. Millions of people of all ages in Ireland, Sri Lanka, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and the United States have been inspired by the singer’s performances; profits from her concerts and CDs have benefited children, particularly those with disabilities. She is also known as a fighter for worker’s rights in her home country, Japan.

She says: « Sing the love, love the song I want to fight with dreams in my soul, with you Sing the love, love the song, I want to fight with dreams in my soul ».

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Kumiko Yokoi – Japan

Kumiko Yokoi uses the power of music to spread messages of peace, dignity, and hope. Millions of people of all ages in Ireland, Sri Lanka, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and the United States have been inspired by her performances; profits from her concerts and CDs have benefited children, particularly those with disabilities. She is also known as a fighter for worker’s rights in her home country, Japan.

When Kumiko saw the pain and suffering of children – second and third generation Agent Orange victims – at a rehabilitation center in Vietnam, her heart was broken. « The village is a holy place, » she said. « It has experienced peace and the cruelty of war. » As she has been doing since 1973, she dedicated her 2004 concert to help children. Vietnam has about 1.2 million children with disabilities, 150,000 who are Agent Orange victims.

The concert was her fourth in Vietnam. She first performed there in 1973 when she sang Stop! Tank for northern soldiers during the Vietnam War. She is especially moved by children and families whose health has been devastated by environmental catastrophes. In 1985 she sang in Nicaragua and in 2001 she donated the profit from sales of a CD to children in Afghanistan.

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Chitamma – India

Linked with ProPoor.org, and with Fish trade: women join hands against middlemen menace.

Chitamma is the driving force behind Samudram, a federation of fisherpeople in 21 coastal blocks of Orissa that trains women to be economically independent and demands entitlements to education, public health, PDS and water … (full text).

She says: (about Koturu, a very small village). « If there was anything aplenty here, it was the staggering number of alcoholics. Even women were drinking!” … “People were constantly borrowing money from sahukars for medical expenses, marriages, festivals, even to buy food. Borrowing for food never struck them as unusual. Money borrowed to meet health or marriage expenses was, to them, real borrowing. It all added up in the end, but people never really saw the connection” … (full text).

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Chitamma – India

Chitamma was the natural choice for president. “Everyone unanimously nominated me, and I couldn’t refuse, not after having come such a long way,” she says, a little embarrassed. “Samudram has 11 executive members, including the president and secretary, and a total membership of 3,080, all traditional fishermen. Members can join by paying a lifetime membership of Rs 150” she adds … (full text).

Assisted by over 7,000 volunteers from around the world, Charity Focus and its ProPoor network offers an impressive database of news, information and job searches on the Internet … (full text).

Clad in a simple cream-coloured sari, blue blouse and matching blue bangles, 65-year-old B Chitamma greets us with a warm smile as we step into her spartan office.

There’s a prosperous feel to the village — a new high school building, the (gaudy pink) cyclone shelter, concrete bylanes, and the general hustle and bustle of a small, close-knit fishing community going about its business. “It was not like this 10 years ago… we have seen our livelihoods and food security disappear faster than the fish in Chilika,” Chitamma quips. “There was a time when we told the government: either you kill us, or you give us our fishing grounds back (from the non-fishermen). But it didn’t make a bit of a difference to the government!”

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Jerry Mazza – USA

Linked with 9/11’s history of tragic events, and with AIDS estimates surge in America.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York.

He writes: … I mean, who loves a loser? Really. And who loves a winner? I saw most of my generation in the ad business get blotto at lunch on whatever came out of a bottle, or what you could roll up in a little cigarette, or cut up into lines on your desk and snort. And it wasn’t just the creative guys. It was the suits. They were even worse. But to all, it was about having the performance-winning edge, the big idea that led to cold hard cash, the biggest office, the best babe, the biggest pad on Park Avenue, the biggest house in Scarsdale, etc. It was about winning. Winnnnnn-ing, you dumb mo-fo! The cash, the awards, the whole enchilada. Was it crazy? Yes, of course. Did it go away when I did? No. Of course not … (full text, December 17, 2007).

Jerry Mazza’s Professional Profile.

The Star Chamber: Shedding light on today, Dec. 12, 2007.

..

More of 9/11’s amazing history, Dec. 24, 2007.

Wealth and Hellness© — the Bush years, Dec. 21, 2007.

We don’t know until detainees are tried whether they are guilty or not. Some may be and some may not. By dismissing due process summarily we suspend the liberties which we claim to be fighting to protect. But these are old, almost tedious arguments, though their challengers have provided the insidious intent to repeat them until they are heard and understood. That is, given the record of torture at Abu Ghraib, the humiliating human experiences of Guantanamo, the slow and steady decent into the pits of ethical and moral depravity. (full text, October 2, 2006).

If you see something, say something … , July 26, 2007.

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Sheridan Prasso – USA

Linked with Back and Fort.

Sheridan Prasso is a writer, editor, and Asia specialist with more than 15 years of experience in the region. She focuses on global issues from cultural, economic, and business perspectives – with topics ranging from the glamour of chief executives and exotic travel destinations to the grit of red light districts and garment factories. Her reportage has taken her across the breadth of Asia, from Dhaka to Hanoi, Beijing to Jakarta; her expertise in the region has led to guest lectures at the world’s top universities, appearances on television networks such as CNN and ABC of Australia, and interviews with notable figures including Nobel Peace Prize winners Aung San Suu Kyi and Muhammad Yunus. Sheridan’s articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, The Los Angeles Times, and The World Policy Journal, among other publications. The South China Morning Post has called her « the new face of the old Asia hand » … (full text).

She says: « (We need) … more stories about the realities of Asia, and fewer about the exotic nature of travel and adventure and the “Wild, Wild East.” There is a real craving for knowledge about what’s going on in Asia today, and the media –of which I am a part— is not satisfying it, but instead offering stories that continue to play into our preconceived expectations. The desire is there; now if only editors would realize the need to fulfill it. (full interview text).

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Sheridan Prasso – USA

A stock crash is just what China needs, by Sheridan Prasso, Dec 15, 2007.

She says also: « As I explain in the chapter of my book called Matters of Men and Country, The Unbearable Lightness of Being Portrayed, in Hollywood movies, over and over again, action heroes such as Jet Li and Chow Yun-Fat save the girl but don’t even get a romantic kiss at the end. I have read that in the finale of ‘Romeo Must Die’, the kiss scene between Jet Li and Aaliyah was cut after it fared badly in front of test audiences, and the director decided that American audiences weren’t ready yet to see an Asian man acting the same way that a white hero would. There is no such prohibition between white men and Asian women on screen (witness « Sideways » as the most recent example). These images from Hollywood need to change before male sex symbols from Asia can be fully regarded as masculine heroes in the eyes of Hollywood and in Western culture in general. I argue that such images – of Asian males as asexual and/or emasculated in Hollywood movies – have an impact on interpersonal relations, such as the low prevalence of Asian male/Caucasian female couples in the West » … (full interview text).

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Index December 2007

Felicity Arbuthnot – England

Linked with John Pilger – Australia & England, with Keith McHenry – USA, and with C.T. Lawrence Butler – USA.

Felicity Arbuthnot lives in London. She has written and broadcast widely on Iraq, one of the few journalists to cover Iraq extensively even in the mid-1990’s during the sanctions. She with Denis Halliday was senior researcher for John Pilger’s Award winning documentary: Paying the Price – Killing the Children of Iraq (see its video, 03/06/2000 ITV, 75 min. runtime). She is also the author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of recently published Baghdad in the educational Great Cities of the World Series for World Almanac Library. (on Selves and Others).

See also this videos: Mumia Abu-Jamal, When War BackFires! The Message Stupid – Iraq’s Bastille Day, 6.21 min., from Suryu, by Felicity Arbuthnot, Added on August 03, 2007 … and: Iraq: The Hidden War, 05/29/06, 49 min. runtime (this video contains images that should only be viewed by a mature audience) … and: Gaza’s Reality, 5 min. runtime … and more videos, scroll down and click in the window on the wanted title …

Criminals’ literary profits, Open Letter to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Nov. 20, 2007.

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Felicity Arbuthnot – England

Look at the whole blog: between two rivers.

She writes: This was my 18th visit to Iraq since the Gulf War. The last four have been very close together: last October, January/February, I went back at the end of March and then again in May. Each time I am struck by the deterioration. Each time there is another horror. In March it was the daily bombing of the infrastructure. The electricity has just died. Many people can’t afford candles and use makeshift lamps. People put a wick in a bottle with oil and quite often the bottle explodes. The injuries have soared. The burns are horrendous and there is no treatment, not even cling film as an emergency measure to cover the wounds. There are no painkillers. There is no plastic surgery. There were two other things I noticed. Like with every embargo in history, there was a small amount of profiteering in money dealing. You have a fraction of the population at the top of the regime who have family abroad sending in dollars. There are restaurants springing up. You can get Christian Dior sunglasses, absolutely anything. Yet 98 percent of the population don’t have a way of sterilising burns. The other thing that struck me was the breakdown in the spirit of these very brave people. They feel that it is never, ever, going to end. Yet when I became ill on this trip, they were so concerned. I suddenly collapsed in the hotel foyer in Mosul and was virtually unconscious. My interpreter and my driver kept letting themselves into my room, touching me on the head and saying: “Are you all right? Shall we get a doctor? » They were saying, “You keep coming back here and Iraq has made you so ill ». (full long text on iraqchat.com, not dated).

Tony Blair: The Quartet’s ‘ Peace Envoy’, Discredited, Deluded, Disgraced, by Felicity Arbuthnot, July 10, 2007.

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Robert Reich – USA

Robert Bernard Reich (born June 24, 1946) was the twenty-second United States Secretary of Labor, serving under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. Reich is a former Harvard University professor and the former Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Mr. Reich is also on the board of directors of Tutor.com He is a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security. He is an occasional political commentator, notably on Hardball with Chris Matthews. (full text).

He says: « Wages are increasing for the top 5 percent [of the population]. Median wages of production workers, who comprise 80 percent of the workforce, haven’t risen in 30 years, adjusted for inflation. The reason is globalization and technological displacement. That is, employers can get cheaper labor either by going abroad or getting software to do it ». (full interview text).

Robert Reich’s personal Blog.

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Robert B. Reich – USA

Robert Reich Looks Askance at ‘Supercapitalism’.

Hear Robert Reich, read from, and discuss the book, 47.23 min.

How did a self-described “lifelong libertarian Republican”, son of Jewish immigrants and follower of the controversial 1950s philosopher and author Ayn Rand, become the most powerful force in the American economy for most of the past two decades – including the entire duration of the Clinton administration? As Alan Greenspan reveals in his memoirs, his success was due, first, to being in the right place at the right time. He was appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, America’s central bank, at a time when Keynesianism – the belief that government could wisely stabilize the economy through spending and taxing – was becoming discredited, and when America began relying as never before on its central bank to do that job. Greenspan was also fortunate to enter government just as Republicans were in the ascendant … (full text, Dec. 19, 2007).

America needs immigrants’ ambition, Dec. 26, 2007.

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Meiqing Hua – China

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

Hua Meiqing is a policewoman serving at the Pingan Road Police Station of the Sifang Substation of the Qingdao Public Security Bureau. In 1993 she began to work supervising prostitutes; in 2002 she started to take on tasks aimed at tackling domestic violence. She took care of victimized women and created a way in which the police could intervene in domestic violence. She writes extensively on the subject.

She says: « As a grassroots policewoman, I work little by little, adding one drop to another, in legal advocacy work. The prevention of domestic violence is an important task ».

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Meiqing Hua – China

She works for the Qingdao Public Security Bureau.

Hua Meiqing lived in the countryside as a young girl. At the age of 17, she graduated from Shandong Police School, and began her career as a policewoman. Today, 23 years later, she is in the same job. She is now an instructor in Pingan Road Police Station of Sifang Substation, Qingdao Public Security Bureau.

She has taken on all kinds of police tasks. In 1993, she began to work at supervising prostitutes in Qingdao Detention House; in 2002, she started to take on tasks against domestic violence.

Hua Meiqing has always striven to do her work in a conscientious manner. After she read “Outline of Women’s Development”, she started to develop an interest in women’s work, and took up volunteer work for women. She also continued to read on these issues.

Hua is concerned about disadvantaged groups. In 1993, she began to get in touch with prostitutes in detention houses. At first, she was contemptuous of them. But later, an activity named “A letter to my mother” changed her mind. When she saw the letters the prostitutes had written, the feelings they had expressed, Hua was moved to tears.

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