There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow.

Victor Hugo

Live 8 Starts today...for the lineup see the BBC or the live 8 site itself...

Bob Geldof: An open letter to the leaders of the G8-The Independent

the long walk to justice

Why I won't be watching Live 8
By David Stubbs

"More than half the wheelchair users with tickets for London's Live 8 concert will be unable to attend, due to insufficient allocated space" BBC

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"BBC News website profiles a small sample of the many big African artists who some critics say should have been included at the show."

Alpha Blondy
Amadou and Mariam
Angelique Kidjo
Baaba Maal
Manu Dibango
Mory Kante
Oumou Sangare
Rachid Taha
Salif Keita
Souad Massi

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MBC4 will have coverage of Live 8 starting at 5pm i believe...technorati is tracking Live 8 Blogs---The Guardian has a special report----Check globalissues.org for an easy to read background to poverty, 3rd world debt, globalisation and all the stuff that will put these events into perspective---

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A history of ending poverty: Tom Paine's ideas are still ahead of today's campaigners-Guardian

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. --

Thomas Paine, The Crisis Papers, 1783

The world has more than enough resources to accelerate progress in human development for all and to eradicate the worst forms of poverty from the planet. Advancing human development is not an exorbitant undertaking. For example, it has been estimated that the total additional yearly investment required to achieve universal access to basic social services would be roughly $40 billion, 0.1% of world income, barely more than a rounding error. That covers the bill for basic education, health, nutrition, reproductive health, family planning, and safe water and sanitation for all.

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 1998

Quotes from the Vernal Project site

"The US Department of States reported this month that Kuwait is a serious offender of trafficking in persons, making it a country that needs to act on this report, else it will face US sanctions"

Arabic News

Officials and rights activists in Gulf Arab states have disputed US charges that they are doing little to combat human-trafficking or end the use of children as camel jockeys.

Al-Jazeera

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Twenty-two child camel jockeys who returned from the United Arab Emirates last week are undergoing psychotherapy to help them deal with their traumatic experiences in the Gulf.

BBC

For photos see here

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Slavery

bondage: the state of being under the control of another person

work done under harsh conditions for little or no pay
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The story of Alice who applied for a job as a civil engineer and ended up as a domestic servant, unable to get out of the contract because she had to pay back the agency that recruited her..from Stop Human Traffic.

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An article in the Boston Review about American sweatshops

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Trafficking is the "...recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons..." by improper means, such as force, abduction, fraud or coercion, for an improper purpose, like forced or coerced labour, servitude, slavery or sexual exploitation. Countries that ratify the Protocol are obliged to enact domestic laws making these activities criminal offences, if such laws are not already in place (Art.3).

UN: The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons

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Economic and sexual slavery is a highly lucrative global industry controlled by powerful criminal organizations, such as the Yakuza, the Triads and the Mafia. These groups amass an estimated $7 billion a year while making use of electronic technology to expand their networks in both developed and developing nations. Young women and teenagers are often lured into prostitution rings by advertisements for domestic positions abroad and find themselves bought and sold via catalogues or by close family members.
Once enslaved, the women are often beaten and raped before being traded from one master or brothel owner to the next, frequently working up to 18 hours a day. They are at the mercy of the brothel owner, finding themselves in many cases illegally without a passport in a foreign country and forced to repay the debt owed to the middleman, expenses for the journey and the sum that the brothel owner paid for them. Asian prostitutes in the United States and Japan may sell for up to $20,000 each. The United Nations

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OK rant: This morning, (maybe where I work maybe not) one of the kwti employees comes and asks that the tea and coffee man to remove his car from the boss' covered parking space (the boss is not in the country)...no one in the office agreed to tell the sweet man to move his car...which I bet has no AC, is parked in the blistering sun all the time, so now that he has a chance to have it shaded, shouldn't he bloody well have the right to that? So the disgruntled kwti employee went and told him to remove it, and must have done it in a pretty insulting way because the sweet man who makes the coffee was crying after it all. Now the space stands empty with no one's car in it..and what's the point of that really?..anyway a bunch of employees offered to move their cars out of the shade so he could park in the shade (and so that mean 'get your car outta here' man can get a hint), which is a good thing... so now he won't have to bake in the fire hot car after a day of being nice and working hard...

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not a rant:

Driving to work can often be pretty dreary, especially in traffic...and it usually takes about 40 minutes to an hour to get to work...but on days like today, when I get the bright notion of taking a detour and manage to have that flash of brilliance just before the exit that takes you onto the beach road (khaleej)... let me tell you..it turns into a morning of smiles all around...the colour of the sea is that turquoise green/grey (which might be kinda unhealthy, but it sure looks pretty) and the city is sitting back across the inlet and enjoying the breeze...pretty pretty day.

With LIVE 8 coming round the corner...and people and television stations gearing up for the concerts to be telecast around the world from different cities...here are a couple of opinions about the event, the crisis and why the situation is the way it is...

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First a humbling lesson from the Ethiopian famine of the 80's, and how Live Aid might have fueled as many deaths as it saved lives...

"there is no necessary connection between raising money for a good cause and that money being well spent, just as there is no necessary connection between caring about the suffering of others and understanding the nature or cause of that suffering."
From Cruel To Be Kind David Rieff

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Here is a reponse to Rieff kindly passed on to me by Owen Barder
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Another article is from DR Tajudeen and it talks about the shift of focus from Africa as a charity case, to putting pressure on governments to take action...
"Live 8 differs from its predecessor in that it seeks to facilitate action – encouraging demonstrations against poverty in Africa and in favor of free trade, debt write-off and more aid – not simply raise awareness. While this commentary lauds the change of tactic, the author still emphasizes the need for an alternative to the image of Africa as "humanitarian disaster," wherein Africans are not responsible for their own actions, and Western influence will keep them from starving. He stresses a global view of the problem, acknowledging important bridges between African poverty and the wealth of the West. Finally, he criticizes Live 8 for its lack of African performers, concluding, "We cannot be spectators in our own affairs." Marching in Europe Will Not End African Poverty

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Want to know the why and how and what the hell?

The Causes of Poverty

Third World Debt

Fair Trade

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On a more cheerful note, a fourth poem by the Greek poet Sappho has been discovered...2,600 years after it was written...isn't that something? To have your poem resurrected and also appreciated after so long..... It has been bublished in the Times Literary Supplement...
--

On hearing one of Sappho's poems sung, the sixth century BC Greek ruler Solon, a contemporary of hers, asked for someone to teach him the song "because I want to learn it and die"John Ezard (Guardian)
--
Who wouldn't want something like that said about their work or effort or creation?...That such beauty exists and that there are people who have the heart and the senses to experience it is something to smile about don't you think? Humans be hopeful..

• The entire Swiss rail network stalled for three hours due to a power failure, What?? If anyone has been to Switz, then you know how crazy that sounds
• There is a beautiful exhibit of photographs from Afghanistan (1984-2004) put together by Doctors Without Borders
• ...and oh lord, get some Daily Outrage.
  

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If you happened to catch last night's leno (Showtime) then you might have been just as blown away as I was by the dance show put on by the subjects of the new documentary RIZE...it's an expressive dance marvel that evolved on the streets South Central L.A...I seriously cried while I was watching the show they put on last night, wept, sobbed, and was completely hypnotised...I highly recommend you get the documentary made about it (which I haven't seen)or try to catch some coverage of it anywhere...or if you are anywhere where this amazing stuff is going on, enjoy it...It's been a while since I've seen anything so expressive of oppression/resistence and amazing creativity. I cannot recommend it enough and that's just from watching a few minutes on Leno...RIZE ! yes indeed.

Wait you thought that was it? Let me tell you some more...the dance apparently developed from Clowning into Krumping (i learnt new words today)...the former was a dance style which was created by Tommy the Clown as a response to the Rodney King beatings and ensuing riots...Krumping is a developed form of the original, which includes mind-blowing, intense, aggressive, expressive moves...phew...as you can see, I have fallen in love with a dance..

Firstly to the little lady who nearly ran me over on the road today...you know who you are, big SUV, never seen anything like it, black and more obnoxious than a Hummer...when you are on the merge lane, and I am on the main lane it is you who slows down and waits for the cars to pass before you politely and carefully merge onto the road..you do not get to honk at the cars who are in the correct lane to get out of your way...and what the hell do you need a monster truck for??

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Ok folks it's GM food debate time:

first some quotes from todays news about it:

"A recent study conducted by Monsanto itself indicated abnormalities in the kidneys and blood of rats fed MON863, a strain of Bt corn that many Americans eat every day without our knowledge. Monsanto has resisted calls from the European Food Safety Agency to release the full study to the public, leading to a court order to do so from a German judge...

What of the famed argument that GM crops are worth it because they will resolve world hunger? GM crops fundamentally cannot end hunger because hunger isn’t caused by a lack of food. The world currently produces enough food for everyone on earth to consume over 2,800 calories a day – that’s enough to make most people a bit pudgy. The problem is that food doesn’t go the hungriest people because they don’t have the resources to buy it or grow it. Pennsylvania is full of productive farms, yet one in ten residents of the City of Brotherly Love know hunger all too well. Hunger is caused by a lack of access to basic human rights, including good education, health care, housing, and living wages – in the Untied States and throughout the world. Hunger is also caused by racism and inequality. These topics aren’t on the agenda of this year’s BIO conference."

Kirsten Schwind and Hollace Poole-Kavana

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Who/What is Monsanto??

If you're talking about PCBs, Agent Orange, Bovine Growth Hormone, water privatization, biopiracy, untested/unlabeled genetically engineered organisms, or persecuting small family farmers, you're talking about the Monsanto Corporation.(organicconsumers.org)

How to avoid Monsanto Investments

Monsanto Products to Avoid

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• Revealed: health fears over secret study into GM food(Independent)
• The Guardian has a special report on GM Food
• Toxic pollen from widely planted, genetically modified corn can kill monarch butterflies, Cornell study shows
  -------------------------------------------

"Syngenta admitted this week that, for over four years, it "mistakenly" sold hundreds of tons of an experimental corn seed not yet approved for human consumption.

Contaminating the world's food supply is becoming a habit for big agribusiness.

Back in 2000, a genetically-modified (GM) corn called StarLink was discovered in Taco Bell tacos. Manufactured by Aventis, StarLink was modified to be more insect-resistant through the insertion of a bacterial toxin into the corn's DNA. When eaten, however, it can provoke intense allergic reactions, including anaphylactic shock...

In 2002, Friends of the Earth released a report documenting how StarLink and other banned GM-corn brands were sent as food "aid" to poor countries by USAID and the World Food Programme."Liza Grandia

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Greenpeace

Seeds of Deception: How To Avoid GM Foods

For those of you that enjoy freakshows...ok..wednesday's Oprah will be the one where Tom Cruise makes an ass of himself jumping around on her couch in an embarassing attempt to convince everyone that he and Katie Holmes don't have a business deal..
So tune in MBC4 at 9pm...for the scariest thing since Tom Cruise had seizures screaming 'show me the money'...
Not recommended for sensitive viewers...

Happy Birthday to the Lady

The Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi Celebrates her 60th Birthday today...She has been under house arrest since 1989, for non-violently struggling for democracy in Burma...She is a believer in Gandhi's methods...
She has also been awarded the Sakharov human rights prize for freedom of thought..

An album was made in tribute to her called For The Lady...the artists included Paul McCartney Pearl Jam Sting Ani DiFranco R.E.M. Bonnie Raitt U2 Eric Clapton Peter Gabriel Coldplay Avril Lavigne Maná matchbox twenty Damien Rice Indigo Girls Travis Natalie Merchant Ben Harper Bright Eyes among others...


Photo's of Aung San Suu Kyi for the BBC
Anti-Myanmar protesters mark Suu Kyi's birthday reuters

Birthday tributes pour in for Burma's Suu Kyi The Independent

The Burma Campaign

Bloggers/blogging in the news:

Bloggers' 'victory' over Iraq war memos

BBC

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Blogs recognised 'freedom awards'

BBC

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'Angry Arab' blogs full of humor

Monterey Herald

It's the season for graduating students and there are a couple of commencement speeches that were published on commondreams.org...one is by Granny D Haddock and here are some quotes (was she giving this speech in kwt?) :

"Radical religious leaders—unlike the wiser men and women of their faiths—promote that hatred when they make people feel powerless; when their people are made to believe that all power comes from some selfish, egomaniacal God who shares none of His power with His people. With some shared power from on High, might not the people be able to shape a happier world—a world where the beautiful differences of lifestyle and belief are tolerated and celebrated--like so many different birds and flowers in God’s garden?

When people are made to feel powerless, either by religious despot or political preacher, they feel despair, even if they disguise the anxiety and pain of that powerlessness as piety or as patriotism--or both. "Doris “Granny D” Haddock

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Red meat linked to bowel cancer says a new study, but didn't we know that already ? Get your fibre and your water and eat your veggies folks..please...The Guardian has an article about how Michael Jackson ended up 270Million $'s in debt....Microsoft is helping China censor bloggers, WHAT?-By blocking words like "democracy' 'freedom' 'human rights' and communism' among others....

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Now this story about a Pakistani woman deserves to be quoted at length from today's Independent:

"On a terrible June day three years ago, 14 men from the dominant Mastoi tribe in Meeranwalla volunteered to rape Ms Mai as a way to settle a score after her 12-year-old brother Abdul Shakoor was seen walking with a Mastoi girl. The decision on retribution had been taken by a village court to preserve tribal honour. The jirga, or council of village elders, summoned Ms Mai to apologise for her brother's sexual misdeed. When she apologised, they gang-raped her anyway.

After the atrocity was carried out, Ms Mai was paraded naked before hundreds of onlookers. Finally, her father covered her with a shawl and took her home."...

..."The President even threatened to "slap" a reporter "in the face" for publishing details in an international magazine about Mr Mai's defiance. The reporter in question was Pakistan's leading women's rights activist, Ms Jehangir, who is also a UN special rapporteur on human rights."...Jan McGirk

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Human Rights Commission of Pakistan

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I'm really starting to wonder about those speeding electronic boards they have hung over the highways that tell you how fast you are going...it keeps saying that I am going at 133 km/hr when I am only just above 80km/hr... I drive like a grandma ...(and my mom who is really a grandma, drives like a fiend, so watch out for a senior citizen in a speeding caddy)..
Anyway, someone needs to fix those machines...

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Once again, since we are talking about cars...I know, I know... I do this a lot...find an excuse to encourage everyone to drive eco-friendlier cars...bear with me.

Here are some sites that you can look at to make a decision about buying your next car..

ETA Car Buyer's guide

Greenercars.com

BBC article on the A to F rating system now used for cars

An article about the Lexus RX400h, the new green(?) SUV

Make your own Biodiesel

And just for fun:

Cars in Movies quiz

Calculate your eco-footprint

Feel the need to balance out the environmental damage we all take part in?

Save Rainforest with one click

Rainforest Action Network

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Final Notes

Michael Jackson is a free person...Guess who makes a surprise appearance after a year of no news from him...the big bad Saddam...just in time to coincide with all the news about the war having lost popular support...hhhmmm what a coincidence...oh it also happens to coincide with the leaked memo showing that MP's were told they had to find and excuse to go to war...

will playing the tape of Saddam being questioned about massacres help to boost support for the badly ailing war drive??? We can only wait and see..

The guy who made 'Supersize Me" now has a tv show called 30 Days which sounds interesting..

Have a good day folks and I hope that one of my favourite bloggers out there remains the patient, awsome person she is (you are an example to us all) while she deals with foul mouthed children playing dirty on her blog...

I'm wondering if we'll ever see blue skies again...losing faith..

Ok maybe just start off with some news...just to get the engine working again:

I woke up to the BBC talking about the third world debt relief deal...which on the face of it is a great thing...but no one makes concessions without expecting something seriously self serving in return...I hope that the shadow of debt is not lifted only to be replaced with an even darker one...
For a background on the debt crisis see globalissues.org...an interesting quote from there is:

"the developing countries' debt is partly the result of the unjust transfer to them of the debts of the colonizing States! A sum of US$ 59 billion external in public debt was imposed on the newly independent States in 1960"

Here is an opinion piece about the news, from The Guardian, by Ken Wiwa (the son of the Nigerian writer/activist Ken Saro-Wiwa who was executed for protecting the Ogoni people from Shell Oil and the Dictatorship)

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On a related note...Bob Geldof et al..Are putting together concerts (ala Live Aid of the 80's) Called Live 8...concerts will take place on Saturday 2 July 2005 in London, Rome, Paris, Berlin and Philadelphia...[click on the cities to see who is playing there]

They were very appropriately criticised for not including African musicians in the concerts and for not staging any concerts in an African city...Read the critical article by Andy Kershaw which also includes some of his recommendations of Musicians from African nations---today's Independent reports that Bob Geldof is now trying to enlist African acts for Edinburgh...too little too late?... or better late than never?

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On the Book front...I highly recommend Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

It will take you just a couple of days to read and you will find yourself laughing out loud at some scenes and crying at others...get out and get this especially those of you who like comics and history and just a good read.

Other graphic novels to look at are anything by Joe Sacco from Malta, who is a journalist/graphic novelist who invites you to dive into the places he has visited, including Palestine and Sarajevo, with his words and drawings and a cynical eye..

I should order Maus, because hey, it's the king of the genre...

It's been a while...I took off last minute...didn't take my pc with me...and am not staying in places where i have access to the net...or to a pc...not often anyway..strange..I have not been reading blogs for weeks now..and have no idea what's going on..I have never been so cut off from news and views..And the tv in this last big super duper power on the planet I am visiting is sooo brain numbing...I thought I would conduct an experiment and just cut myself off the internet..and try to rely only on the daily news...and cnn..and whichever paper I could get my hands on..and let me tell you..I might as well be living on a different planet than any other country..all I know about news is what Michael Jackson's trial is up to, what runaway bride went galloping off this week and really not much else in between the haze of commercials..the endless commercials. Saddest of all though is the way that news-casters here use language and gestures and loud slow talking that makes you feel as though they were talking to babies or to viewers who have the brain capacity of babies...It's weird like I am watching an opera or a kindergarten play..Why underestimate your viewers so severely?
But that is what is going on in between lovely travels, good friends, beautiful lush greenery, lots of rain and chilly weather in spring, and museums and bookstores and anonymity...beautiful stuff...I hope everyone is well..I'm going to blog hop now for a little bit...not much time...

Several things depressed me today...

The first…I discovered that yet another family I know abuse their employees…both the lady of the house and the man seem to find sport in criminally exploiting and beating up the people who work for them…which is pretty horrific…and when I say abuse I mean violence to an extreme…and what is the result? The employees (victims) are deported or fired and the abusers don’t even get a slap on the wrist…What went wrong with us here that people find it acceptable to abuse others and not feel even the slightest bit of remorse? It doesn’t help that this culture rewards you for being Kuwaiti no matter what you do…”hey I just beat a woman up to the point where she had a miscarriage”-Bravo, you get to exchange her for a newer human punching bag…don’t we get outraged unless the victim has a certain passport? Why can’t we differentiate between employing people and owning them?? Who is here to defend the rights of the abused? Does anyone know?... because I don't. Who can they turn to? Who can put a stop to the abuse and to the attitude that it is acceptable?

The second depressing thing was a conversation with a Jordanian man who was born and raised here. Not only that but his aged parents even graduated from high schools here all those decades ago…He works here, and works hard, he knows no other home and identifies with no other country…he loves this place because it is home to him, even with all its scars…problem is, as I am sure you have guessed, that they are not allowed to join the exclusive Kuwaiti club. After decades of life and work and loyalty they are still not good enough to be citizens. Most countries would be proud to have hard working, decent, intelligent and loyal people contribute to their advancement as a nation. It would be a badge of honour to say “this good person here, this is a Kuwaiti”. But no, we just milk people dry till they are of no material use to us and then we tell them to giddy-up on back to the places we continue to insist they belong; except that they were born here, they made their friends and lives and loves here and they have nowhere else to belong to.

I had a good moment when my colleague looked up from the morning paper and said “this is the most beautiful thing I have seen in a while” and she held up the blank daily columns in the Qabas and Siyassah…The columnists left them blank in solidarity with Ahmad Al-Baghdadi and in protest against the attack on free speech and expression …of course the depressing bit is that thy had to get to this point at all…Hope a lot of people turn up at the graduates society 6:30pm today..

Charity Event

Tomorrow, Tuesday...

At Zahra Center there will be a whole day (regular opening hours) event to raise money for the Ghassan Kanafani Cultural Foundation.

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The Stated objectives of the foundation are:

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Establishing and running kindergartens for young children age 3-6 years and habilitation centers for children with disabilities in Palestinian refugee camps and other deprived areas.

Establishing and running libraries and art centers for children age 6-16 years.

Integrating activities between disabled children and other children.

Conducting teacher training programs in Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) and special education.

Promoting cultural and social activities

Publishing Ghassan Kanafani's literary works.

Taken from palcordinationforum.org

==============

Ghassan Kanafani was the famous writer of such short stories as Men In The Sun, a haunting tale about Palestinian refugees being smuggled in empty water tankers into Kuwait, in the unbearable heat. It's a very moving story and you can almost feel and see what it happening as you read it.

He spent time as a teacher in Kuwait which is where he wrote many of his stories. He was killed when his car exploded in 1972, his young niece Lamise was killed too. His widow, Anni Kanafani, who runs the GKCF will be at the charity event tomorrow...

If you want to help children in need, make your way there sometime in the day..

In keeping with the broad topic of unethical writing habits that were highlighted this past week in relation to a particular plagiarist we all know...I just saw a preview for a movie that is being screened on Showtime called Shattered Glass...

I am happy to watch it just to see one of my favourite actors Peter Sarsgaard (Boys Don't Cry, Garden State, Kinsey)...but it's also an interesting true tale about an associate editor of The New Republic, Stephen Glass ,who was fired for journalistic fraud..

Glass was making a 6 figure salary in his twenties, he was associate editor and yet 27 of the stories he wrote for TNR were made up...

He was actually quite creative, he faked web-sites, mailboxes and even bought extra mobile phones to create the illusion that the references he 'faked' were real...He was eventually caught and fired..and the film covers all that..

It was an article he had written about hacking that was uncovered as a fake by Adam Penenberg at Forbes.

He wrote a book about his exploits, The Fabulist

For a bunch of his articles go here

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• Half a Glass: The incomplete contrition of serial liar Stephen Glass.By Jack Shafer (Slate)
• To Our Readersby The Editors (The New republic explains)
• Hacker heaven, editors' hell :The New Republic's bogus article reveals a chasm of cluelessness. (Salon)
• Shattered Glass at The New Republic: How fabricating author Stephen Glass was brought down.By Lori Robertson (Am. Journalism review)
  

Screening times on The Movie Channel (TMC):
Monday April 25th 22:00
Saturday May 7th 18:00

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For a more recent story about fraud, check out the Jason Blair/New York Times fiasco:
The Jayson Blair Project: How did he bamboozle the New York Times?
By Jack Shafer

National Assembly/Majlis al-Ummah/Parliament

Dissolved next week?

Yes or No

First things first, Some Blogger related Headlines

Are bloggers journalists? San Francisco Says Yes

which is related to the following headline

A Chill in the Air

"city ordinance likely to choke local bloggers' right to write freely about politics"

The term 'chill' is used in the law to refer to describe a limitation on free speech and expression, due to the fear of persecution. (we know a lot about 'chilling effect' here)

Blogger Hits the Wall

A revealing article about a blogger at the white house press briefing.

The future of blogging

"8 million online diaries as of March 21, up from 100,000 just two years ago. A new blog is created every 7.4 seconds. That adds up to 12,000 new blogs a day, 275,000 posts a day and 10,800 updates an hour. "

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Something interesting has hit the internet-A progressive media site that has video and audio content that you can browse and also add to..it's called commonbits.org I just watched an anti-landmine commercial that CNN and others have refused to show...

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Several high profile deaths this week...the Pope, Prince Ranier of Monaco and Saul Bellow...

The one I'm interested in is the last one...

Philip Roth said: "The backbone of 20th-century American literature has been provided by two novelists - William Faulkner and Saul Bellow" Guardian

He won the Nobel Prize for Humboldt's Gift .

Here are his obituaries from The Guardian and The New York Times.

Some older articles about him (including his contemporaries Norman Mailer, Philip Roth and others):

Twilight of the Old Goats from Salon

Bellow's Gift from NYRB

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Japanese Trains now have a women only section, because there was a big problem during morning rush hour with women getting fondled...guys, really?

As if the pictures weren't bad enough, there is footage of the seal hunt...so you can judge for yourselves how 'humane' the clubbing is...

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For those of us who enjoy P2P, File-sharing...getting audio and video from sources like Morpheus, Kazaa, Limewire, Grokster and so on...the MGM v. Grokster case now at the Supreme court should be interesting to follow.

The result of the case could change the way you get music and video and the way that amateur and non-industry artists get their music 'out there'...

The lower court (2003) and the ninth circuit court of appeals (2004) both decided that the makers of Morpheus and Grokster could not be held liable for the illegal ways that their product could be used.

This result did not please big-business players from the music industry. They have taken the case all the way to the Supreme court.

What the big guys want to do is reverse the decision on Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios 1984.

The Sony case, also known as the Betamax case, was a decision that none of us can imagine having gone another way. If the 1984 Betamax case had turned out differently it would have been illegal to make video tape recorders and we would never have been able to spend our lives taping shows from tv, making music mixes, and doing a host of other things we take for granted.

In 1984 Universal sued Sony for creating the Betamax recorder. Universal said that since the recorder could be used to infringe upon copyright, then Sony should be held responsible.

The Supreme court thought otherwise.

Their decision pointed out that since the recorder had fair-use applications then the possibility that it could be used illegaly was not a strong enough reason to outlaw it or to hold Sony responsible.

Fair use includes personal use and the ability to 'time- shift' which means that you tape something for personal use so that you can watch it at a more convenient time.

Illegal use includes making copies and selling them or making copies that would infringe upon the sales and the income generation of the artists and copyright owners, meaning that it could replace the sale of the original.

Now if they happen to reverse the Betamax case and the Supreme court rules that P2P technology is illegal, then we can expect an end to the type of file-sharing we have been enjoying for the past few years. But it won't be long before talented techies find a loophole (like the post-Napster family of file-swappers) and create a legal alternative. It would also mean that Asia and other parts of the world would take the lead in thise type of technology soon, since the US would be a no go zone.

Background:

Napster

Bloggers following the Grokster trial and blogging live from the Supreme court.

Electronic Frontier Foundation all the documents relating to the case.

Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.

The Independent

Lovely news for a thursday morning...as the birds chirp and oh..wait yup they're still chirping, just couldn't hear them over the car starting up in the driveway...Seems like it won't be long till a Silent Spring

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An Egyptian stabbed a Hungarian man and woman, slightly wounding them, after the couple kissed while pausing for a photograph near a mosque at Cairo's popular tourist bazaar, police said Tuesday. Canoe News

So wow, where does it stop really...will it be open season on bare headed women...on people who look at each other a little too long...public hangings for married couples who hold hands in public??

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Johnnie Cochran has passed away...for those who only know him as O.J. Simpson's lawyer here's a little more about him on Democracy Now

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Earthquake

Another earthquake has hit the region that caused the December Tsunami...This earthquake is 8.7 while the last one was 9.5...both way above average..there is an alert out for people to expect a possible Tsunami...However, because this quake hit a deeper location than the last one, there is a lesser chance of that happening, hopefully---Today's quake happened just off the Sumatran coast in Indonesia...
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Aid to the victims of the last Tsunami are still short $4Billion which world governments had promised and not yet paid...Four times more women died in the last Tsunami than men, mostly because they were waiting for fishermen at the shore and were working in shops, or at home---300,000 human beings lost their lives the in the December tsunami---Child trafficking has become a huge problem due to many children being orphaned after the last Tsunami.
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For more go to the report at the US Geological Survey site---BBC---Reuters---The Guardian
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The alert is out in Indonesia, Thailand, South India including Kerala and all the nearby countries..
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Agencies helping Tsunami Victims: Doctors Without Borders---Oxfam---IRC---Ricky Martin Foundation---Save The Children---Habitat for Humanity---SOS Childrens Villages...

Beirut Burning

The articles coming from some US sources would love to have the positive events in Beirut -calls for independence, solidarity of the people etc..(if any such things really exist) - be a result of their invasion of Iraq. At least that way something could be salvaged of what many see as a very costly mistake...This way they can say it was so that democracy could flourish across the Middle East that their young men and women died while killing other men and women...
Is that what's really happening? Is this the domino effect of democracy and free markets? Or are history and life and politics a little more complicated than just the idea of nations acting like copycats and having one big single reason for taking the steps that they take..
And then, events are not all that beautiful after all...Ya Beirut...Car bombs, Lebanese and Syrians trading angry words, hatred on the airwaves, people cancelling trips to Beirut, restaurants telling their staff they will call them if they need them and closing down, like other businesses, sectarianism rearing its ugly head...what will we look back on a month or a year down the line..which path will our brothers and sisters in Lebanon and our brothers and sisters in Syria have taken?

For now these are the headlines...
Beirut Car Bomb, Third This Month, Kills Two, Injures Eight Bloomberg
UN report sparks mixed reactions among citizens Daily Star

Memories of war, fear and friendship in my home city, where time has stood still The Independent

Murder of Mr Lebanon continues to poison political air The Independent

What the Lebanese fear most is not Syria's army but a power vacuum The Independent

It is not democracy that's on the march in the Middle East The Guardian

The road to Damascus Le Monde Diplomatique

Weapons of mass deception revisited AL-Ahram

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’ E. Burke

Hotel Rwanda is one of those films that we need to take a look at as soon as we can...

"Hotel Rwanda is an act of memory against forgetting, a reminder to the world -- from presidents and policy makers to ordinary people in front of their TVs--that it turned away as 800,000 people were butchered, in plain sight, in 100 days. (There's a quiet but telling moment in the film where an American photojournalist, on viewing film footage of a massacre, sadly observes, " "people will see it, say 'Oh, that's awful,' and go back to their dinners." And so it proved.) And it's a summons to act now -- to give meaning to the words "Never again." " From Mother Jones magazine

If you want to learn more about what happened in Rwanda

• Read the book We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch (available in Kwt Bookshop)
• Take a look at PBS's extremely informative site about the Rwandan genocide: The Triumph of Evil
• Romeo Dallaire was the UN official who defied orders and decided to stay in Rwanda to help stop the violence..he has written Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda about witnessing the genocide.
• Visit the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
• Read THE RWANDA CRISIS by Gerard Prunier
• Watch "Forsaken Cries." Available from Amnesty USA, http://www.amnestyusa.org/. A documentary examining the genocide in Rwanda.

Never Again?

Right NOW: More than 1.6 million people – 80 percent of northern Uganda’s entire population – have been displaced and now live in squalid conditions.---16 million Congolese are going hungry, more than two million have been displaced by the war and in some parts of the country, two out of five children are dying in infancy. ---In Somalia: two million people displaced or killed since civil war erupted in 1990 and close to five million people estimated to be without access to clean water or health care

Heart of the Congo Is a documentary about the humanitarian efforts there...2.5 million people have died in the DR Congo in the past 3 YEARS-that's 2283 human beings A DAY! All while we are lucky enough to eat, relax, watch tv, shop, laugh with our families and enjoy our lives...

• Let's not forget that we are good at forgetting, so let's keep remembering and keep looking for ways to help and places to help..
• Ask: why do millions die in the Congo and yet no humanitarian Intervention takes place ? Why have hundreds of thousands been slaughtered and almost two million made refugees in Darfur while no one seriously intervenes to stop it? Why does the world not shine a light on this type of genocide/terrorism/murder? Why is the humanitarian crisis in these places not on our screens as often as places where it's in the interest of the big countries to intervene? These are invisible conflicts, suffering that is kept from the rest of the world, let's not ignore these people please.
• Amnesty and Oxfam have a campaign to Control Arms
• Support Women for Women International: They work in the Congo, Rwanda, Iraq and other conflict zones.(thank god Oprah finally did an episode about the DR Congo)
• Support Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and Amnesty.
• DO NOT buy conflict diamonds. Learn how to avoid buying diamonds that came at the cost of people's lives.
• Learn more about conflicts in Africa.

Interview with Boutros Boutros Ghali:
TIME: What problems do we cause?
Boutros-Ghali: We say we have 16 members in the Security Council: the 15 members plus cnn. Long-term work doesn't interest you because the span of attention of the public is limited. Out of 20 peacekeeping operations, you are interested in one or two. Two years ago, it was Mogadishu. Now it is Sarajevo. Tomorrow it will be Haiti. And because of the limelight on one or two, I am not able to obtain the soldiers or the money or the attention for the 17 other operations. Nobody was taking care of what was going on in Rwanda. It was one of my personal greatest failures.

"Kuwait's minister of Islamic affairs said Monday his ministry would shortly issue a new fatwa, entrusting the emir to rule on a controversy over whether to give women political rights. "The fatwa panel met recently and discussed the viewpoint of Islam on women's political rights ... It concluded that the issue is a bone of contention and that the ruler should have the final say on it," Abdullah al-Maatuk told reporters in Parliament.
He said the fatwa would
be signed and released
next Saturday.
The new fatwa would replace one issued in 1985 which clearly stated that Islam forbids women from voting and contesting parliamentary elections."

Daily Star

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"since 1995 at least fourteen countries--including Mexico, Rwanda, Indonesia, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina--have set aside at least 30 percent of government seats for women...

Beijing Betrayed, a report just out from the Women's Environment and Development Organization, lambastes governments around the world for failing to live up to their commitments: "Many women in all regions are actually worse off than they were ten years ago." The Nation

We are one of those governments and we got a nice telling off in the report...

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"On International Women's Day, Rita Henley Jensen reflects on her recent trip to Saudi Arabia, where feisty, educated women are challenging the nation's system of strict gender apartheid."

Read about it here.. and guys, if even Saudi beats us then shame on us is the greatest understatment ever spoken.

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In these weeks where lectures and talks and activism have been the main course for many of us that hope for development, change, freedom, peace, equality, justice and all the other things that our battered souls are reaching for...I couldn't help but wonder why I haven't heard an inspiring, energetic speaker in Kuwait, address a crowd with the passion and dedication that can transform them into dreamers and revolutionaries and into an unstoppable force that can make things happen..ok maybe I am asking for too much and more than that, I hope that maybe I just haven't been to the right places...instead of the same tired faces, saying the same tired words to the same yawning handful of supporters that bothered to turn up at a lecture, I have been craving people with a knack for speaking with overpowering love for the cause, with humour and presicion and explosiveness and with an awe for the sacredness of a community of people asking for justice.
Has anyone out there been to such a speech, heard anyone inject life and love into a crowd? If so where and when is this person/are these people going to speak again? I say speakers, because there is nothing more wonderful than that electrifying buzz that goes through a crowd when someone has hit exactly the right chords to make them light up and feel alive. You can get it with reading, but that is usually a solitary practice...when a bunch of people all experience that moment of wonder together, it's pretty beautiful. I feel like we need that kind of fuel, so that it's not just disparate groups trying to keep themselves motivated. Just like we need the dedicated workers and writers and planners and organisers (some of which we have, but maybe not as much as the opposition does) we need the catalysts, the people who light the fire under the whole lovely experiment and get it going.
If anyone out there knows people like that, please point me in the right direction, because I want some inspiration.

In between the first burst of clapping and the second...before we got ungraciously escorted outta there... 

The freedom train rolling into the Majlis 

All ages, all walks of life...same message- Political Rights NOW! 

Exactly 

Singing the freedom song..can't get it out of my head now. 

The young democrats waving and shaming the parliament (Democratic Circle) 

Our chorus leader and other activists 

Our sisters in black...always there to support women's rights..good for them. 

I woke up on this 'morning after', and was waiting for that feeling where you can actually get out of bed and start the day...I need to snooze a lot you see...and so, in between all the different alarm clocks going off at different times, I was going through all the events of yesterday...cheery young activists, determined senior citizen activists, blue all over the place..idiotically rude MP's and then shock that people would applaud, like that is the worst thing that happened in that room..I know, I know, they had a rule book, or at least a rule paper that they had to follow..sure..we're ok with that cause we are peaceful folk...we know what's right and we will keep asking for it, even if we stumble along the way...because yesterday was about the beautiful singing..the nice day and the fact that there were ladybugs all over the place..you know that they're a good luck sign..especially if one landed on any of you lucky people...I wish there were more people out there yesterday, even though I thought the number was great, I just know so many people that should have been out there but weren't...and I know it would have been good for their souls, to be brothers and sisters and friends and comrades on a sunny day out in front of the building that looked out onto a family of people demanding to be heard...and being so sweet about it too...That's what went through my head on this morning after..
so as i slowly crawled out of my half awake state i saw a purple piece of paper sticking out of a cardboard box that I have been avoiding for ages...and the purple paper suddenly caught my eye after over a year of being there, ignored...here's what was on that paper..it made me laugh a little..and I figured it wanted to be looked at today, of all days..

Because woman's work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or repetitious and we're the first to get fired and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it's our fault and if we get beaten we must have provoked it and if we raise our voices we're nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we're nymphos and if we don't we're frigid and if we love women it's because we can't get a "real" man and if we ask our doctor too many questions we're neurotic and/or pushy and if we expect childcare we're selfish and if we stand up for our rights we're aggressive and "unfeminine" and if we don't we're typical weak females and if we want to get married we're out to trap a man and if we don't we're unnatural and because we still can't get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can't cope or don't want a pregnancy we're made to feel guilty about abortion and for lots and lots of other reasons we are part of the women's liberation movement.

Happy Inernational Women's Day!

One woman, as a single drop of water, may appear ineffectual, but beware the powerful physics of cohesion. The rising evolutionary wave, whose time has come, is unstoppable.
A 21st Century Feminine-ismKeynote Address to be Given at the "Gather the Women" Celebration on March 8th, 2005
by Victoria Covell

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Who's writing about yesterday?: The Feminist Majority Foundation--Ms. Magazine---Calcutta Telegraph--Morocco Times--Swissinfo--Reuters--NYNewsday--CNN--Guardian

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Today, MARCH 8 2005, is International Women's Day...

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Yesterday, March 7th, was also the "fortieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday - the historic voting rights march in Selma, Alabama...On March 7, 1965, Alabama State Troopers and Dallas County Sheriff's deputies used billy clubs, tears gas and cattle prods to stop some 600 black marchers from reaching Montgomery in a bid for voting rights." Democracy Now

السلطان يهدد بالنزول إلى الشارع

اذا سمحت الجهات المعنية بحشد ناشطات سياسيات امام مجلس الامة اثناء انعقاد جلسة الغد, فانهم »سيملأون شارع الخليج, غدا

ايضا بالشعب الكويتي الرافض لقانون المرأة

....

الحكومة بدت ديكتاتورية في ادارتها لموضوع حقوق المرأة, اذ حاولت فرض توجه بعينه على المجتمع وباتت وكأنها تدار من قوى خارجية تحرك البلد كما تريد

In the same paper

الحكومة انتهت من اعداد دراسة حول حقوق المرأة كشفت عن ان 70 في المئة من المواطنين يؤيدون هذه الحقوق, فيما يعارضها اقل من 30 في المئة, مشيرا الى ان هذه الدراسة ستوزع على النواب قريبا

Both from Today's

السياسة

Summary of the above in English: Members of political Islamist groups threaten to get people opposed to women's rights out onto the street if permission is given to supporters of women's rights to go assemble in front of the parliament building. They also suggest that the government is forcing women's rights on a public that doesn't want it.

In the same paper, a government study reveals that 70% of the public support women's rights and less than 30% oppose it.

Even Meryl Streep is now criticising us for our country's discrimination against women...and when it comes from the Queen of the screen..isn't it time to start listening?

Of course even more importantly she was making the comments as a board member of the group Equality Now and on the occassion of the launch of a new UN report on discrimination.


You can get Equality Now shirts---You can join the Equality Now global campaign---Take a look at their list of discriminatory laws worldwide---Take a look at the Beijing Declaration appraisal page, this is the declaration in which countries promised to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women by 2005.

On Monday there will be a Solidarity gathering at 8am in front of the Parliament Building, on the beach to support women's rights. The instructions are to wear blue. My additions are to tell everyone from your grandparents to your neighbours to come and be together peacefully in support of a country that should act like it deserves to be part of the world community.

Want to catch up on your women's rights education?

Books:
Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law Authority and Women by Khaled Abou El-Fadl : Legal Expert in Islamic jurisprudence, writes beautifully.

The Second Sex By Simone de Beauvoir: It's a classic, and a book that is part of western feminist history. It asked important questions that are still relevant for some societies like ours.

Women in Kuwait : The Politics of Gender Haya Al-Mughni

Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Arab Women: Between Defiance and Restraint. Editor Suha Sabbagh.

Legal:

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
The Kuwaiti Constitution

Four infants aged between several months and two years old have been accused of looting! Their bail was $50, how's that for a court that will believe anything---Here's and article about the way bloggers blew the lid off the Gannon scandal

The violence in Iraq is causing a lot of psychological damage, a moving article describes the sad state of mental health and of those who are supposed to treat it..

Learning, the easy way:
Here are some links to sites that make learning fun and easy--Sparknotes summarises topics like astronomy and biology and maths along with philosophy and literature if you want to look up something or brush up on something you forgot---The Teaching company provides audio lectures by professors on a wide range of subjects, which can make your commute a learning experience---want to learn Japanese Kanji script, here's a game you play that teaches you---want to learn about famous authors check out these highlights of their life and work at the Guardian