International Conference on "ENGAGING THE OTHER"
The Power of Compassion

October 26-29, 2006
Kalamazoo, Michigan USA

An international, multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary conference
examining concepts of "The OTHER" from a universal, cross-cultural perspective to promote wider public dialogue about concepts of "Us and Them"

Sponsored by
Common Bond Institute
Co-sponsored by
HARMONY Institute,
the International Humanistic Psychology Association
the Fetzer Institute,
and Western Michigan University

Supported by a growing international list of universities and organizations

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

www.cbiworld.org for full details

PROGRAM COMPONENTS (within a 3 1/2 day schedule):
> 5 Plenary Speakers
> 5 Plenary Panels
> 26 Concurrent Sessions
> 3 Daily Conference-wide Facilitated Dialogue Groups
> Evening Cultural programs and Community activities
> E-conference links to Satellite Locations at universities and
institutes in the US and various countries to expand an inclusive
global dialogue.
> E-dialogues and E-working groups, created during the conference
as themes emerge, to continue the dialogue process beyond the
conference and lead into future events.
> Media Exhibits and Events

AN OUTANDING, DIVERSE POOL OF PRESENTERS:
Huston Smith, Sam Keen, Marianne Williamson, Archbishop Elias Chacour, Maureen O'Hara, James O'Dea, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Abdul Aziz Said, Eyad El Sarraj, Ruchama Marton, Sen. John Vasconcellos, Jamal Dajani, David Michaelis, Geshe Gendun Gyatso, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Don Edward Beck, Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Joseph Montville, Aftab Omer, Aisha Gray Henry, Jeffrey Mishlove, Lee Mun Wah, Stanley Krippner, Paul VonWard, Sharif Abdullah, Gorka Espiau, Ihsan Alkhatib, Satsuki Ina, Marilyn Youngbird, Ahmad Hijazi, Ohad Bar Shalom, Steve Olweean, Alexander Badkhen, Mark Pevzner, Gay Barfield, Marvelene Hughes, Deborah Koff-Chapman, Mukti Khanna, Josh White Jr., Steve Fabick, Bruce Gibb, Elza Maalouf, David Schoem, A T Miller, Robert Oppenheimer, James Macsay, Lewis Gover, Anna Rodina, Hana Hasan, Alvaro Cedeno, Wendy Woods, Charles Behling, LaRon Williams, Elizabeth Barton, Ilham Al-Sarraf, Anna Badkhen, Gemma Bulos, Brenda Rosenberg, Kate Runyon, Sharon Lowe, Jane Dutton, Margaret Warner, Sandy Heierbacher, Shadia Kanaan, Robert Small, Paul Clements, Mushtaq Luqmani, Laurie White.

PURPOSE OF THE CONFERENCE IS TO:
> Raise the level, depth, and breadth of public dialogue and awareness on core issues. Examine dimensions and dynamics of "The OTHER" on individual and group levels, and consider how enemy identity is formed, perpetuated, and manipulated, including fear-based belief systems, negative stereotypes, projection, prejudice, and scapegoating. Explore concepts through psychological (intra-personal & inter-personal), sociological, cultural, anthropological, historical, philosophical, & spiritual perspectives.
> Identify and compile fundamental questions, dilemmas, and implications for further deep inquiry and examination
> Tap our shared wisdom and compassion as a community - from the local to the global - in developing practical applications.
> Formulate findings to make available to all

PARTICIPATION: The conference brings together key presenters and participants from around the world. The event is open to the public.

LOGISTICS:
Dates: October 26-29, 2006 (Thurs. night to Sun. afternoon)
Location: Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA - Radisson Plaza Hotel
Program: Posted on-line, and also available by Email on request.
Registration: On-line, or contact CBI directly
CEC: Continuing Education Credits available

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For Information and Registration, CONTACT:
COMMON BOND INSTITUTE
Steve Olweean, Director, Conference Coordinator
12170 S. Pine Ayr Drive, Climax, Michigan 49034
Ph/Fax: 269-665-9393 E-mail: SOlweean@aol.com
Program, registration, site information, and full details available at Website: www.cbiworld.org

Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
May 30, 2006

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) aims to promote constructive perspectives and dialogue about Muslim-Western relations.

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*For an archive of CGNews articles and other information, please visit our website at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).

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ARTICLES IN THIS EDITION:

5. Philanthropy and the Saudi Experience by Michael Saba
Michael Saba, an international relations consultant, gives his first hand stories of charity initiatives in Saudi Arabia, dispelling an unfortunately widespread myth that the only cause people give to in the country is terrorism. Describing this experience at the Hope Center in Saudi Arabia, an organisation giving support to children with special needs, he puts a human face on the philanthropic efforts of Saudis.
(Source: Arab News, May 24, 2006)

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ARTICLE 1
Are you praying on my team, or not?
Patricia Dunn

Westchester County, N.Y. - My mother is a diehard Yankees fan. She takes every win and loss personally. And she doesn't want to know why a player is traded or leaves the team. In her mind, once you're out, you're out.

As children we learned never to mention the other New York team in her presence. So, it made sense to me that for years she never asked me one single question about my conversion to Islam. She never asked me why I decided to abandon Catholicism, the religion in which she had reared me. As far as my mother is concerned, when I converted I went to play for a rival team.

Then my son was born, and the I-don't-want-to-know-about-it mother became the crusading Yankees fan Grandmother. She was determined to have her grandson on her team, the winning team. She wanted him baptised, even though she hadn't been to church in years. But even with all her demands about rearing my son the Catholic way, she still never asked "Why?" She never wanted to hear how my newfound faith helped me to embrace her and the values with which she raised me.

So, when I opened an e-mail from a Christian in response to an essay I wrote about how Islam helped me find the Jesus in Christmas ("... What made you quit JESUS to become a Muslim?"), I thought, finally, an opportunity to tell someone all the things my mother didn't want to hear.

But he went on to write, "... don't get me wrong, I respect Islam and I respect Muslims, I don't agree with the image that the United States is making of the Islamic World ... but I just can't stand Christians becoming Muslims." And I could see from his use of exclamation marks and capitalised letters in the rest of his message that he was angry and hurt. And like my mother, he didn't like losing a player to the other team.

I've gotten this reaction from more than a few Christians over the years. One woman, a friend, said, "I understand if you became an atheist but to go to another faith is preposterous." She believed you stick with what you're born into and you either make it work or avoid religion altogether.

I have various reasons as to why I decided to stop calling myself a Christian, and then, years later, chose to embrace Islam. Mostly it had to do with my best friend, who later became my husband. It wasn't because he asked or necessarily wanted me to convert, but in the process of researching and reading to better understand his faith, I came to better understand myself. And as a social activist, I was drawn to the social justice aspect of Islam.

Not all Christians I've encountered in the 15 years since I converted to Islam have treated me like their rival. There have been many Christians, members of my own family even, who've supported my right to worship as I choose. They saw the common ground in our faiths. It didn't matter to them if I was no longer playing for the home team, as long as I was still in the ballpark. And for them, the only coach any of us needs to be accountable to is God.

My son started Little League this month. At the touch of a button he reaches out across thousands of miles to e-mail his grandparents in Cairo about his new glove. So with maternal instincts surging, I naively try to hold onto the hope that with technology shrinking the world, there will be more understanding and acceptance among people of faith - more breaking of rules that persecute rather than preserve any real sense of identity.

When he reaches adulthood, perhaps my son will find a world free of religious persecution, a world where there isn't someone insisting his or her perception of God is better than his. I want my son to be a Boston Red Sox fan, or even a Mets fan, if he wants. And I want my son to take to heart, as I take to heart, what the Koran says: "... I worship not that which ye worship, Nor will ye worship that which I worship.... To you be your way and to me mine."

After all, I'm just a woman who still believes what her mother told her long before she'd heard of Christians or Muslims or the Yankees or the Mets. "Sweetie", she said, "God is love."

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* Patricia Dunn teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is a writer and contributing editor for Muslimwakeup.com. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).
Source: Christian Science Monitor. May 18, 2006
Visit the website at www.csmonitor.com (http://www.csmonitor.com/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright © The Christian Science Monitor. Please contact lawrenced@csps.com for reprint permission.

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ARTICLE 2
Religion and politics: all the president's truths
Stanley R. Sloan

Richmond, Vermont - Besieged by plummeting approval ratings and mounting domestic and foreign challenges, President George W. Bush nonetheless keeps the faith. Speaking to a California audience last month, he affirmed that he bases "a lot of foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an almighty....Secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul...to be free."

Such a statement will surely add to the distress of many friends of the United States who believe that it has been led astray by such beliefs. The concern is about a president who so strongly believes he is doing "God's work" that he cannot see mistakes when he makes them or alternative policies when events cry out for them.

Europeans have always been uncomfortable with the way American presidents have invoked God in support of U.S. policies. Bush didn't start this, but he has practiced it with more conviction than most of his predecessors.

A French foreign policy expert, François Heisbourg, has put European concerns this way: "The biblical references in politics, the division of the world between good and evil, these are things that we simply don't get. In a number of areas, it seems to me that we are no longer part of the same civilisation."

As opposed to America, where religion has historically been on the side of "freedom", Europe's experience suggests that the church is not always a friend of democracy, and that religion can be a source of conflict as much as an instrument for peace. For Europeans the political success of the 18th-century Enlightenment was that it ensured a social contract based on reason, rather than on an absolute truth that made discussion and debate impossible.

For the most part, religious faith has reinforced many of the values on which European and American civil societies are based. The freedom to worship in a faith of one's choice is an important source of cohesion and peace in our societies.

But some Europeans have lately equated the danger of American evangelical fundamentalism's influence on U.S. policy with that posed by radical Islamic fundamentalism.

A European friend put it this way: "In Europe, it is newcomers who are challenging the fundamental values on which our political system is built, whereas in the United States this challenge comes from a core indigenous group's perversion of the founding values of their own system." She added, "I find this even scarier."

Even the most committed American Christian fundamentalists, however, support separation between church and state. By way of contrast, many Islamists -- and not just the radicals -- want a close match between their religious beliefs and the rules of state.

Nonetheless, fundamentalists see the texts of their faith as the "truth". A middle-of-the-road Christian "believes" in God. But someone with a more fundamental approach -- including, apparently, President Bush -- sees the existence of their god as a fact, not as a belief.

This kind of certitude becomes particularly problematic at the intersection between religion and politics. A strong believer, with political views on an issue grounded in religious beliefs, is less likely to tolerate varying political views. Uncompromising faith, which can be a strength in one's personal life, can be a recipe for disaster in foreign policy.

That point was driven home by Bishop Wolfgang Huber, Chairman of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany, when he warned that some Americans fall into the trap of believing that the American dream means "American superiority in the name of Christ".

The next American president will undoubtedly invoke God's blessing on America, as American presidents have always done. But it is one thing to ask God for blessing and guidance. It is entirely another to believe the Almighty blesses everything that we do.

A bit more religious modesty would help put U.S. foreign policy back on more solid ground.

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* Stanley R. Sloan is a visiting scholar at Middlebury College's Rohatyn Center for International Affairs. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).
Source: International Herald Tribune, May 18, 2006
Visit the website at www.iht.com (http://www.iht.com/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 3
Abayas and skirts
Beth Boal, Larin Brink and Fahad Mohammad

Richmond, Virginia; Kuwait City, Kuwait; Iowa City, Iowa - Black shadows walking side by side with women wearing Escada Jeans and tops while flaunting the latest Prada bag are a typical scene in many of the oil-rich Gulf State shopping malls. The abaya, a long, loose cloak covering the entire body from head to toe is often worn by Arab women. However, it has had to make way for the latest European and American haute couture. Just a few decades ago most Gulf women were seen only in black abayas, but today denim and abaya-clad women are as frequently found side by side. In politics and the workplace, women are also making strides in bringing together the modern and the traditional, in unique and quiet ways.

There have been numerous misconceptions concerning Arab women by the Western world, but negative stereotypes by the media are slowly being transformed by Arab women themselves. For instance, Arab women are often seen by their Western counterparts as being veiled by an oppressive patriarchal society. The reality is quite different. This reality varies, however, depending on which Arab country you are referring to, and which Arab woman you are talking about. For years, Westerners have misconstrued the hijab, the Islamic practice of women wearing a veil, as a control mechanism used by Arab men to oppress women. What most Westerners do not know is that wearing the veil is not mandated in most Arab countries, and Arab women choose to wear it in effort to avoid the male gaze.

The veil is based on Islamic religious doctrine, but is not much different from Christian-Judeo tradition which also calls for women to cover their heads in certain circumstances. Women who choose to wear the veil do so to protect themselves from unsolicited stares and to avoid being seen as mere sexual objects. In contrast, although women in the U.S. are not required to wear tight jeans and low-cut tops, many choose to do so knowing that this will increase their sex appeal. The end result, ironically, is that Arab women are seen as oppressed and American women are seen as liberated, despite the fact that the latter’s wardrobe seems designed to be physically pleasing to men while the other attempts to downplay the physical.

However, Arab women are subtly incorporating western fashion into their own styles, as if to send a message to the Western world that they can create a balance between these opposing viewpoints, and incorporate both of them. It is not uncommon to see women wearing brightly collared hijabs, some decorated with glitter and using striking, bright patterns, with tight, hip-hugging denim jeans.

In a similarly paradoxical way, Arab women are gaining access to other parts of society that were formerly closed to them without having created an overt feminist movement or even denouncing traditional roles, as feminist movements in the West did. Rather, change just seems to be happening, as many Arab regimes are slowly embracing women’s suffrage. Almost a year ago, Kuwaiti women got the right to vote and run for parliament, a breakthrough political decision that was debated for years and one already enacted in Bahrain and Qatar. Today, conservative Islamist MP’s have acknowledged the positive impact of this decision and have already taken steps to win women votes by putting on the table anti-discrimination laws. After decades of being a half-democracy, Kuwaiti women can now become involved in the political process. The involvement of women in politics is a must to show the West that Arab women are not merely oppressed, and will increase respect for Muslim countries everywhere.

In the economic arena, however, women have made only minimal progress. For women in the Middle East, barriers to employment perpetuate the gender inequality of the region. The World Bank report "Gender and Development in MENA: Women in the Public Sphere" addressed the issue, stating that "[a] key entry point to bring about change is to focus on women's economic rights." While blue collar jobs will no doubt remain off-limits to women, there is also a thriving corporate job market, which women are often unqualified for because of a lack of education. The impact is great. If a country does not employ half of its citizens, it stifles innovation and possibly stagnates development. Because of high unemployment, a lack of a female work force, and a large population of people too old or too young to work, the Middle East and North Africa have the largest economic ratio dependency rate in the world, which is to say, relatively few wage-earners provide for a large segment of the population. Some reports show that a household’s income could increase by 25% if women were a more active part of the labour market.

Nevertheless, there are some prominent exceptions to the rule. In several Arab countries, like Lebanon and Kuwait, women make up one-third of the workforce, and they are even entering male-dominated occupations as ambassadors, doctors and engineers. In addition, many women have started businesses and entered the stock markets, forcing their way into the patriarchal business sector and paving the road for the next generation of Arab women. Opening up the possibility of greater economic freedom for women could be the catalyst needed for gender equality in the region.

Flip through Arabic TV channels these days and you will see significant changes and paradoxes in Arab societies. There are elegantly dressed news presenters on Lebanese channels, raunchy, hip-shaking video clips of Haifa Wahbi, Elissa and other female singers, and women speakers at financial presentations in Doha and Dubai. Change is both subtle and dramatic, and will no doubt always seem "odd" to Western eyes. It is inconceivable that the women in this region abandon the abaya and the hijab in favour of low-tops and skirts, but it is quite possible that women will rise to the top of the political structure. The world should not expect outcomes that parallel the development of women's rights in the West, and foreign values and ideologies mustn't be imposed on the region. Rather, we should celebrate that a balance has been struck between abayas and skirts.

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* Beth Boal, Larin Brink and Fahad Mohammad wrote this article as part of the Soliya Connect program, an online dialogue program that allows students from American and Arab universities to engage in inter-cultural dialogue. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), May 30, 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 4
Politico-religious cults and the end of history
Saad Eddin Ibrahim

Cairo - When Francis Fukuyama published his essay The End of History? in 1989, few people in the world, including Muslims, had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or his al-Qaeda organisation. Only close intelligence insiders had this dubious honour at the time. Yet, as Fukuyama revisits his original thesis, bin Ladenism has become a dramatic symbol of radical and militant "Islam" the likes of which have not been seen since the Hashashin movement of the 11th century.

Like al-Qaeda, the Hashashin wreaked violence and destruction on their enemies. They brutally and spectacularly murdered their political opponents, typically between midnight and dawn, after consuming an ample amount of a cannabis derivative known as "hashish" (hence their name Hash shin, or "hashish users"). In less than half a century, their movement dwindled to a cult, and ultimately vanished by the end of the same century. The only surviving legacy of that bloody episode is the Arabic-rooted word which eventually found its way into western languages as "assassin", one who carries out a plot to kill a prominent individual or politician.

The more than fourteen centuries of history of Islam and Muslim peoples are replete with movements: revivalist, protest, retreats, Sufis, messianic, reformist, radical, and revolutionary. In this respect, the 1.4 billion contemporary Muslims are not much different from the adherents of Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism. In fact Europe, and especially Germany, witnessed many similar movements in the 16th and 17th centuries, a period of profound socio-economic transformation. At that time, the process of "modernisation"was just getting underway, with all its concomitant large-scale dislocations.

Muslim societies of the Arab world finally underwent similar transformations following the oil boom of the 1970s. In such tumultuous times, individuals seek shelter and solace in "religion", which often takes the shape of revivalist fundamentalism. It is also such periods that offer opportunities for the relatively deprived and ambitious to challenge the prevailing order, and for this new social formation to inch up or jump several steps on the class ladder. It is no accident that Osama bin Laden and Layman al-Swahili first challenged their own domestic ruling elites in the 1980s. Having failed, they shifted the battle to a global level, targeting what they dubbed the "mother of all evils": the United States, its close allies (in Europe), and its clients elsewhere in the world.

Many of Fukuyama's propositions in the afterword to the new edition of The End of History and the Last Man are adjustments and refinements of his original argument. He has smoothed out some of the sharper edges of the earlier thesis, re-contextualising it in light of both geopolitical events and new, equally sweeping worldviews, such as those propounded by Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1994) and Bernard Lewis in What Went Wrong? (2001).

I am more in agreement with Fukuyama's updated version. As a native of Egypt and a lifelong observer of Islamic movements, I am quite impressed by the sensitivity and sharpness of his rebuttal to the metaphysical thrust of The Clash of Civilizations and to the orientalist nature of What Went Wrong?

In essence, Fukuyama forcefully takes issue with the Arab and/or Muslim exceptionalism thesis. He cites recent empirical data from the United Nations Development Programme's Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) to argue that the overwhelming majority of Arab youth aspire more to the values and lifestyles of western societies than those symbolised by austere bin Laden-like theocrats.

A further substantiation of the AHDR was revealed by the University of Michigan's World Values Survey (WVS) in 2003. Samples from several Muslim countries, including Arab Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine, revealed attitudinal commitments to various scales of western-style democracy that ranged between 84% and 96%. These results were similar or only slightly lower than those of their counterparts in European countries. Ronald Inglehart, who administered the study, noted after critically reviewing the WVS data that if there were any clash of civilisations at all, it is over sexual mores, family and marriage values, where differences were as great as 20%-30% on attitudinal scales between Muslim and western societies. But even in this area, it may be argued that attitudes in the West were as conservative fifty years ago as they are today in Muslim countries.

In the last three years, the march of events in the Middle East has confirmed some of Fukuyama's assertions about the universal appeal of liberty and democratic governance.

Inclusive vs. exclusive politics

The success of the Islamic-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey and its counterpart with the same name in Morocco, which waged campaigns for parliamentary elections in 2002 with an impressive showing, had a tremendous demonstration effect on other Islamic-based movements. A dramatic case in point was Hamas, which called for a boycott of the most recent Palestinian presidential elections, but made a 180-degree turnabout a year later and waged a successful campaign for the parliamentary elections in January 2006 that put them on top and enabled them to form the new Palestinian government.

Something similar occurred with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who earlier in their career as a militant movement shunned democracy as a western import but in the last five years have waged forceful electoral campaigns to get into the Egyptian parliament. To everybody's surprise, the Muslim Brotherhood increased their share from 5% of the vote in 1995 to nearly 20% in 2005. Many observers believe that they could have done even better had the election been free and fair. In brief, by 2005 democracy had become the only game in town in the Islamic world. No sober analyst would consider this a final commitment by Islamists to democracy, but the process of transforming them into Muslim democrats is clearly underway.

Another way of understanding radical Islamists is in terms of inclusive versus exclusive politics. So long as the entrenched autocrats of the Muslim world continue to deny their peoples equal rights of participation, there will always be disaffected dissidents who may resort to extreme ideologies and violent practices. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries excluded Muslims rallied to theocrats, the bin Ladens, al-Zawahiris and al-Zarqawis, to combat the autocrats, the Mubaraks, Assads, Fahds and Musharrafs. The autocrats and theocrats are mirror-images: both are exclusive.

The antidote for both is a politics of inclusion, i.e. democratic governance. If that is an integral part of "modernity" in Fukuyama's revised discourse, then as Muslims increasingly join the "third wave" of democracy (started in Portugal in 1974, and already engulfing some ninety countries), the likes of al-Qaeda may very well join al-Hashashin in the dustbin of history.

This article is part of an openDemocracy debate on Francis Fukuyama's afterword in the second paperback edition of The End of History and the Last Man (Simon & Schuster, 2006)

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* Saad Eddin Ibrahim is a leading Egyptian pro-democracy activist and a sociologist. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).
Source: openDemocray, May 10, 2006
Visit the website at www.opendemocracy.net (http://www.opendemocracy.net/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 5
Philanthropy and the Saudi experience
Michael Saba

Washington, D.C. - Try googling “Saudi” and “charity” together. Almost all of the hits tell you stories of alleged illicit activities by Saudi charities funding terrorism and almost every other dastardly activity that you can imagine, supposedly being performed with Saudi charitable funds. You have to go way down on the list before you find anything even vaguely positive about Saudis and charitable activities. This week, however, a news article did make the papers about Saudi benevolence. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was acknowledged by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) for having recently given $10 million for draught relief in the Horn of Africa. And that act is not unusual for the Saudis.

According to a WFP spokesperson, "Saudi Arabia has become a significant donor to WFP operations worldwide. Since 2005, the Saudi government and private sector have given over $20 million in contributions. Most recently, Saudi Arabia has provided funds for WFP operations in Cambodia, the occupied Palestinian territory and Pakistan."

They go on, "Providing assistance to over 50 countries across the globe, Saudi Arabia plays a leading role in humanitarian and relief activities. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has donated billions of dollars bilaterally or multilaterally to relief and development projects over the last 30 years and the recent donations to WFP are examples of its ongoing commitment to help humanity."

According to various sources, Saudi Arabia, on a per capita basis, is the largest donor of foreign aid in the world, yet the major international media continue to cast Saudi Arabia's charitable activities in a negative light. Also, although frequently missed by the international media, there are uncountable acts of individual and private and public institutional charity carried on throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

During the last couple of weeks, this writer and a group of American visitors have seen firsthand numerous charitable activities in all parts of Saudi Arabia. From disabled children's programmes in Riyadh and special schools for the handicapped in the Eastern Province, we observed scores of dedicated staff and volunteers caring for the less fortunate. But the highlight of the trip was a visit to Hope Center for Exceptional Needs in Jeddah.

The Hope Center is a multilingual, multicultural centre for children with exceptional needs. They rehabilitate children with disorders such as Down’s syndrome, autism, attention deficit disorders, and learning disabilities. Their services include skill training in the areas of cognition, self-help, socialisation, behaviour modification and fine and gross motor skills. Parents of these children are offered training and support through the institute. The Hope Center is an exceptional place.

We met children of various races, faiths and nationalities and saw great love and care being given to each and every child. One lovely little girl was deaf and yet she could read lips in both English and Arabic. One little boy with a learning disorder hugged each one of us warmly as we entered his classroom. Another young man with Down's syndrome proudly showed us his skills on a classroom computer and beamed when we were told that he would be taking a job bagging groceries at a local supermarket.

As we were standing at the bottom of the stairs, a tiny six-year-old girl was helped down the steps in an agonisingly slow manner. She had thick glasses and moved ever so slowly. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she smiled and reached her hand out to greet us all. We each hugged her and with tears in our eyes we were told that she couldn't walk or talk or even swallow when she was brought to the Hope Center. She turned and smiled one more time as she ambled into her classroom for her morning lessons.

I met another sweet young girl who also had a lovely smile. When I was told the name of her family, I asked her if by chance she was related to an old friend of mine. She told me that my friend was her grandfather. She then said that she would see her grandfather soon and greet him for me. The staff told me that this young lady was advancing in her studies very rapidly and looked forward to her classes every day.

When we asked the staff about their needs they told us that since they were a charity, they were dependent on private donations. They also stated that a very high priority for the Hope Center was to place their students back in normal life situations and to help them obtain real jobs. The Hope Center staff said that they were looking for roles models in the Kingdom who had made the jump from institutional care to the world of work. We all pledged our support for their efforts.

That same afternoon, our group was invited to a meeting at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce. I arrived early and asked an official there if I could get access to a computer to check my email while I was waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. I was taken to two or three different places which had computers that were not turned on before I finally ended up, totally by chance, standing in front of a young Saudi man with the biggest smile that I have ever seen. As this young man greeted me and offered me the use of his computer, I took note of the fact that he was disabled and had to move from his desk with the use of crutches.

I asked this young man, who was a secretary at the Chamber, how he had progressed from his disability to this job at the Chamber of Commerce. He said that he decided that he just couldn’t sit at home feeling sorry for himself and that he had taken training and found a sensitive work environment for his situation at the Chamber. When I told him about the Hope Center, he immediately volunteered to meet the staff there and spend as much time as he could with the children. The next day this gentleman and the director of the Hope Center were already in contact with one another and planning program time together.

It was a teary day for me. Oh how I wish that this story would appear at the top of the list when one entered charity and Saudi on Google.

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*Dr. Michael Saba is an international relations consultant.
Source: Arab News, May 24, 2006
Visit the website at www.arabnews.com (http://www.arabnews.com/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) provides news, op-eds, features and analysis by local and international experts on a broad range of issues affecting Muslim-Western relations. CGNews-PiH syndicates articles that are balanced and solution-oriented to news outlets worldwide. With support from the Norwegian government and the United States Institute of Peace, this news service is a non-profit initiative of Search for Common Ground, an international NGO working in the field of conflict transformation.

This news service is one outcome of a set of working meetings held in partnership with His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan in June 2003.

~YOUTH VIEWS~

CGNews-PiH also regularly publishes the work of student leaders and journalists whose articles strengthen intercultural understanding and promote constructive perspectives and dialogue in their own communities. Student journalists and writers under the age of 27 are encouraged to write to cbinkley@sfcg.org for more information on contributing.
*The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors, not of CGNews-PiH or its affiliates.

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AMARC LAUNCHES EVALUATION PROCESS OF THE COMMUNITY RADIO MOVEMENT IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Lima, Peru, May 26, 2006. The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) launched the Latin American component of the worldwide participatory evaluation process of the community radio movement leading to the AMARC 9, the World Conference of Community Radio Broadcasters, to be held November 11-17 in Amman, Jordan.

The Asia-Pacific Roundtable has already been held in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The AMARC Africa Roundtable will be held July 5, 2006.

In a two-day Roundtable, held in the facilities the Peruvian "Coordinadora Nacional de Radios" on May 24-25, and entitled "Community radios and Social Change in Latin America and the Caribbean", representatives of community radios, production centers, community television, civil society organizations, academics, evaluators and communication for development stakeholders in the region, initiated a participatory evaluation process that will combe regional Roundtables, on-line discussions, national workshops, questionnaires, accumulated knowledge and experience gathering and programme evaluations.

The Round Table started by reviewing the general situation of CR and the challenges facing Latin America and Caribbean societies. There were present representatives of organizations and networks working with AMARC LAC, radios and national representations of 18 countries and the heads of AMARC LAC programmes (among others, Gender, capacity building and ICTs, communication rights, Pulsar News Agency, management and environment) reviewed the obstacles created by discriminatory legal frameworks and reflected on the impact of CR in the region. The participants also discussed the participatory management of community radios and the analysis of the communication project of CR in addressing the needs of the peoples of the region.

The participants also explored lines of action, and the perspectives for AMARC LAC and its contribution to the strategic plan of AMARC 2006-2010 and the participation in AMARC 9. The Latin American Roundtable documents will contribute to the AMARC LAC regional evaluation and to the ongoing discussion process in AMARC and will be posted in the coming days in http://www.amarc.org.

Pia Matta, AMARC LAC Vice-president called for "a strong participation of the region in the coming Ninth World Conference of Community Radio Broadcasters AMARC 9, in order to share the knowledge, experiences, learning and perspectives from the oldest community radio movement". The Roundtable also counted on the participation of Elizabeth Robinson in representation of the International Board of AMARC.

To participate in the evaluation or to register in the World Conference of Community Radio Broadcasters, AMARC 9, please visit www.amarc9.amarc.org .
For further information send inquiries to AMARC regional offices or to amarc9info@amarc.org

The Euroscience Open Forum 2006 presents the 10th Special Edition Newsletter. This issue features the following articles:

Feature Article

Riding the storm: can science keep us in the saddle?
Last year’s Katrina disaster could have been prevented or at least mitigated if the US Congress had invested in preventive measures...
Read more at: http://www.esof2006.org/blog_article.php4?ID=24&what=Feature

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Editor's Choice

Myths of science: glowing monkeys, wonder dogs and more
When dinosaur expert Paul Sereno told reporters at the 2002 AAAS Annual Meeting about the discovery of a fern-mowing dinosaur ...
Read more at: http://www.esof2006.org/blog_article.php4?ID=36&what=Article

A new look at the ocean
Half of the world’s population lives within 200 km of the ocean, and 70% of the megacities are on the coast....
Read more at: http://www.esof2006.org/blog_article.php4?ID=37&what=Article

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ESOF News

Young scientists – don’t miss Pretzel with the Prof!
Pretzel with the Prof is a feature of the ESOF2006 Career Programme and a unique opportunity for young scientists...
Read more at: http://www.esof2006.org/blog_article.php4?ID=20&what=News

Travel grants for five PhD students, postdocs and young researchers in Spain!
The Spanish Foundation for Science & Technology (FECYT) will be awarding 5 travel grants to PhD students...
Read more at: http://www.esof2006.org/blog_article.php4?ID=21&what=News

The Euroscience Open Forum 2006 will take place July 15th-19th 2006 in Munich, Germany. View the conference programme and register at www.esof2006.org

-----------

The views expressed by the authors of the articles featured in this newsletter do not necessarily coincide with those of ESOF2006. If you do not wish to receive this newsletter any longer, please click here www.esof2006.de/ to unsubscribe.

NGOs and UN Reform: A View from Inside the UN

Location: Church Center for the UN
777 UN Plaza, 2nd Floor
(44th and 1st Ave.)
New York, NY 10017

RSVP: Full contact information to:
Jessica Hartl, UNA-USA
202-462-3446
jhartl@unausa.org

Featured Speaker

Shashi Tharoor
Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information
United Nations

Background

With the UN member states struggling to implement reforms contained in the World Summit outcome document, there are signs of a renewed North-South divide within the UN. This manifested itself in the recent Administrative and Budget Committee resolution proposed by the G-77 group of developing countries seeking clarifications on the Secretary General's management reform proposals. The committee voted 108-50, with three abstentions, to put off further action on reforms until the fall at the earliest, so that the Secretary General can assure developing countries that the proposed changes in management will not result in major contributors having a disproportionate influence in Secretariat decision-making.

In his role with the Department of Public Information at the United Nations, Mr. Tharoor is in a unique position to reflect on the past year of UN reform activity and the potential for future North-South relations. As he was recently quoted in The Washington Post, "We must reform, not because the United Nations has failed, but because it has succeeded enough to be worth investing in." In this dialogue with the Council of Organizations, Mr. Tharoor will address progress on UN reform, and will talk about how the division between member states has impacted reform negotiations, as well as address what role NGOs might have moving forward.

Program

Welcome
NY Council of Organizations Annual Report
Lynda Selde, Chair, NY Executive Committee, Church World Service

Presentation of Eleanore Schnurr Award to Virginia Hazzard
by Jackie Shapiro

Recognition of Past Chairs and Executive Committee Members
Jessica Hartl, Coordinator, Council of Organizations, UNA-USA

Election of New Executive Committee Members
Fannie Munlin, Chair, Nominating Committee, National Council of Negro Women

Keynote Address
Shashi Tharoor
Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, United Nations

Questions & Answers

Adjournment

Women PeaceMakers Programme
Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice, University of San Diego
18 September - 11 November 2006, California, USA

This programme is an eight week residency for women leaders who want to
document, share, and build upon their unique peacemaking stories. Selected
peacemakers will receive roundtrip airfare, housing, and a small stipend to
cover expenses for the eight-week residence.

For more information, visit http://peace.sandiego.edu/programs/women.html

AfricAvenir News are kindly sent out by Eric Van Grasdorff:

Liebe Freunde,

in der Beilage der heutigen Frankfurter Rundschau (24.05.2006) ist anlässlich des beginnenden Afrika-Festivals in Würzburg ein Brief von Prinz Kum' a Ndumbe III. erschienen.

Unter dem Titel "Afrika ist im Aufbruch" veröffentlicht Prinz Kum' a Ndumbe III. einen Brief an seine deutschen Freunde über die vielen (Fehl-)Perzeptionen, die Europäer von Afrika haben.

"... mein Afrika ist nicht das Afrika der Deutschen. Seit meiner Geburt beobachte ich dieses im Alltag aufstrebende Afrika, mit all den Schwierigkeiten, Widersprüchen, Hoffnungen, Freuden, Enttäuschungen, Rückschlägen - und dem anhaltenden Aufschwung..."

Unter dem gleichen Titel ist von Prinz Kum' a Ndumbe III. vor einigen Wochen auch eine Sammlung von Reden zu Interkulturalität und Kulturdialog sowie zum besagten Aufbruch in Afrika erschienen.

Afrika ist im Aufbruch, Afrika ist die Zukunft
An die Mitbürger der Einen Welt im anbrechenden 21. Jahrhundert – herausfordernde Reden zur Begegnung, Band II

Mit „Dialog und Begegnung contra Kampf der Kulturen“ werden in diesem Buch deutliche Zeichen gesetzt. Interkulturalität und Kulturdialog, auch in der Begegnung zwischen deutschsprachigen und afrikanischen Kulturen, stehen hier im Vordergrund. Dann der Aufbruch in Afrika, der, weil überlagert von Krieg, in Europa nicht wahrgenommen wird. Es geht hier um die Sicherung des eigenen Überlebens auch der Bürger in der nördlichen Hemisphäre, um ein erfüllteres Leben auf dieser Erde, - und dafür bietet das sich der Welt langsam offenbarende Afrika eine ungeahnte Breite von Angeboten und Lösungsmöglichkeiten an.

ISBN 3-939313-06-8
978-3-939313-06-9
€ 21,50

Bestellungen bitte per Email an:
Verlag Exchange & Dialogue, Berlin
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Dear Friends, please circulate this message to everyone you think might want to act upon it. Thank you. -- AW, acting for "The Tent of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah."

THE PEACE OF ABRAHAM, HAGAR, & SARAH:
SHARING SACRED SEASONS, 2006

Shalom, salaam, peace! --

In the fall of 2006, several sacred seasons of the Abrahamic faiths will come together. At a moment of history when religious conflict and violence have reemerged bearing lethal dangers for each other and our planet, God has given our spiritual and religious traditions an unusual gift of sacred time.

Let us celebrate this rare confluence of THE PEACE OF ABRAHAM, HAGAR, & SARAH by praying and learning with each other and by acting together to –-

SEEK PEACE, PURSUE JUSTICE,
FEED THE POOR, HEAL THE EARTH,
SERVE THE ONE

In 2006 and 2007, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish month of the High Holy Days and Sukkot will coincide. During this sacred month will come also the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi (October 4), and the Worldwide Communion Sunday of Protestant and Orthodox Christians (October 1).

The convergence of these dates will then not recur for another thirty years. We call on our generation of the families of Abraham to join in these efforts.

In accord with the ancient tradition that Abraham's tent was open on all four sides to welcome travelers from everywhere, we invite into this celebration not only the three main families of Abraham but also on the fourth side others who share these goals. In that context, we note that Mahatma Gandhi's birthday is on October 2 and that Buddhist, Hindu, and other festivals also come during this sacred season.

Ramadan begins (depending on sighting of the new moon) about September 22-24 and ends about October 22 with Eid al-Fitr, the Festival of Breaking the Fast. The month-long commitment to fast from dawn to dusk each day offers food and life-abundance as a sacrifice, focusing on devotion to God instead of on material success, and calls us to turn toward each other in repentance.

Rosh Hashanah begins the evening of September 22; Yom Kippur falls on October 1-2; Sukkot begins the evening of October 6. The month is one of turning toward God and toward harmonious relationships among human beings and the earth.

St. Francis of Assisi stood almost alone among the Christians of his day in opposing the Crusades and investing months of his life in studying and praying with Muslims.

We urge specific communities to choose from among the many rich moments of the month a focus-time for learning from the past, celebrating the present, and transforming the future. *

For example, we encourage shared celebrations on Sunday, October 8 -- one of the dawn-to-dusk fast days of Ramadan and also the second day of the festival of Sukkot -- or on Monday, October 9, a civil holiday.

In the spirit of the Jewish prayer: "Spread over us the Sukkah of Shalom," we could gather in the fragile, vulnerable, leafy Sukkah hut to celebrate a joyful fast of Ramadan, to joyfully break the fast together after sundown, and to learn joyfully from such teachers as Francis of Assisi and Gandhi – all of whom taught that true security, true peace come from sharing the truth that we are all vulnerable, all fragile, all connected with each other and the earth.

We encourage our religious communities to take action to protect human rights, heal the earth, and -- in the regions where Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah sojourned-- seek peace.

We urge those of all our traditions to begin NOW, in our own cities and neighborhoods as well as nationally and internationally, to plan with each other how to use these sacred seasons to carry out God's will that we live together THE PEACE OF ABRAHAM, HAGAR, & SARAH.

* Perhaps in clusters of congregations, each community could host one meal for members of the others, after nightfall on any of the evenings of Ramadan.

* .Jews could, in line with old tradition, invite "sacred guests" from other traditions into the open, leafy Sukkah; invoke Sukkot blessings upon all "seventy nations" of the world; and implore God to "spread the sukkah of shalom" over us.

* Muslims could invite other communities to join in celebrating some aspects of Eid el-Fitr (the feast at the end of Ramadan), and Jews and Christians could (as in Morocco) bring food to the celebration of the end of Ramadan's fasting.

* Churches could invite Jews, Muslims, and others to join in learning about and celebrating the teachings of Francis of Assisi.

*Synagogues and mosques could eat together in an evening break-fast (Iftar) and then join in reading and discussing both the Jewish and the Muslim teachings of the story of Abraham, Hagar, Ishmael, Sarah, and Isaac.

This statement, initiated by The Tent of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah, has been endorsed by Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches; Dr. Sayeed Syeed, secretary-general of the Islamic Society of North America; and Rabbi Peter Knobel, along with The Shalom Center, the Jewish Committee for Isaiah's Vision, ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and its rabbinic body Ohalah, Pax Christi, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and many other groups. See www.tentofabraham.org

Please let us know what YOU are doing in your own community or organization to build this effort.

Our postal address is
6711 Lincoln Drive
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19119
United States

REMINDER...THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO RECEIVE AN EARLY REGISTRATION DISCOUNT ($25) and receive a free copy of Chris Robb's new book, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING! Be sure to enroll by June 1, 2006.

We still have openings for our 11th annual Summer Advanced Training Institute "HOLDING HOPE AT THE EDGE OF CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION,"
scheduled for Wednesday-Sunday, June 21-25, 2006. Judith Jordan, Janet
Surrey, Maureen Walker, Amy Banks, and our other faculty will be exploring
the many ways relational-cultural practitioners create hope and
possibility both in therapy and in communities. (If you want your book
signed, Chris will be available at the Summer Institute.)

Take advantage of this amazing offer by submitting your registration at
jbmti.org, by phone at 781-283-3800, or download your registration form
and mail it in. Be sure to enter or note the following "connection code"
on your registration form: LAST CHANCE.

To download the complete Summer Institute brochure, go
to: http://www.wellesley.edu/JBMTI/pdf/sti.pdf. Register with a friend and
save an additional $25.

We hope you can join us for this wonderful program!

Yours in connection,
Linda Hartling, PhD, Assoc. Director

P.S. This Changes Everything may be ordered separately through our Publications Office by calling 781-283-2510, $30 plus $8 shipping and
handling.

Jean Baker Miller Training Institute
Web site: http://www.jbmti.org
e-mail: jbmti@wellesley.edu Phone: 781-283-3007
24-hr registration: 781-283-3800
Wellesley Centers for Women
www.wcwonline.org
Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481

Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
May 23, 2006

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) aims to promote constructive perspectives and dialogue about Muslim-Western relations.

*This service is also available in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia and French. You can subscribe by sending an email to cgnewspih@sfcg.org, specifying your choice of language.

*Unless otherwise noted, copyright permission has been obtained and articles may be reprinted by any news outlet or publication. Please acknowledge both the original source and the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

*For an archive of CGNews articles and other information, please visit our website at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).

**********

ARTICLES IN THIS EDITION:

5. There are misperceptions on both sides by Lubna Hussain
Lubna Hussain, a Saudi writer, describes a conversation with an American businesswoman she meets in Riyadh and the surprising realisation that most of their impressions of the other were based on misperception and misunderstanding. She concludes, saying, "I realised that there must be many individuals like this who aren't consumed by some sort of irrational hatred for us, but are just unaware of who we are and what we want. That at the end of the day if there was more exchange of views and ideas between people from opposing sides that the slight shift in perceptions that this would bring about would eventually culminate in a better understanding of everyone."
(Source: Arab View, April 7, 2006)

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ARTICLES

ARTICLE 1
The danger of over-simplifying anti-Americanism
Marissa Ines Wilson

Ithaca, NY - "Why do they hate us?" This question has come up countless times in impromptu discussions with my peers about the American relationship with the Middle East since September 11th. It is the same question that led me to attend a lecture about anti-Americanism at Cornell University by Professor Peter Katzenstein of Cornell University, who is well known for his work on the subject. The lecture, however, revealed to me that perhaps my friends and I have been asking the wrong question, a question that, if not re-evaluated, could be very dangerous to any understanding between the United States and the Middle East.

It is no secret that anti-Americanism exists all over the world. The real secret lies in what it means to be anti-American. It is used as a term of reference in a variety of contexts, but, as I learned, it is a generalisation, and behind the term lay a number of different realities.

Indeed, the lecturer's first and most important point was that there is no such thing as a general anti-Americanism, and that the only appropriate term is anti-Americanisms. The plural nature of the word is crucial in dispelling the myth that there is one form of anti-American sentiment that exists across many different countries and cultures. He stressed that this was not a question of "us" versus "them," because it would be impossible to try to combine the various forms of anti-American sentiment into one category without serious problems of contradiction. What one group might dislike about Americanism, another may admire or approve of.

The professor then went on to dispel another powerful myth as he briefly outlined the history of anti-Americanisms. There is a common feeling that anti-American sentiments have mostly come about as a reaction to American foreign policy. Research, however, revealed that anti-Americanism existed even before the country was founded. Europeans, even before the independence of the U.S., looked down on the struggling colonists, who were, after all, either lower class or members of radical religious groups European society shunned.

He specifically cited European exploration accounts in which explorers express a disdain for Americanism. This finding further demonstrates that this is not a simple concept that can be attributed to any one or all of America's qualities.

The complications were further clarified as the lecturer listed what his research has demonstrated to be the many forms of anti-Americanisms. Among these, he named a "cultural elitist anti-Americanism" in which people feel that American culture is not as refined or sophisticated as their own. Another form is "liberal anti-Americanism" based on a feeling that the United States does not live up to its values. A third form is "welfarist anti-Americanism", which criticises the United States' lack of a highly protective welfare state and some of the country's policies, such as the death penalty. Fourth, "sovereign-nationalist anti-Americanism" describes time-specific resentment during moments when nationalists see the United States as a threat to their sovereignty. "Legacy anti-Americanism" can be a remnant of this in which resentment stems from the United States' past presence and/or wrongdoings in a country. The final form that the lecturer discussed was that of "radical anti-Americanism" which is the rejection of what is perceived to be dominant American values, and unlike other forms, is often accompanied by actions aimed at limiting America's presence as a world power. A widespread misunderstanding among Americans, he noted, is that this is the most common form of anti-Americanism, but as Katzenstein pointed out, this is a view held mainly by very radical Islamists and Marxist-Leninists, of which there are relatively few.

Still, analysis of the forms of anti-Americanism does little to answer the question, "why do they hate us?" I soon realised this question, while well-intentioned, is so difficult to answer because its basic assumptions are wrong – in fact, there is no "they" who "hate" us. The Middle East is no less complex than other parts of the world. Even within the Middle East, different groups have very different reasons for anti-Americanism, and their anti-Americanism varies in intensity. As Katzenstein pointed out, even those with anti-American attitudes often approve of or admire aspects of American culture and values. Liberal anti-Americans, for example, believe very strongly in the American creed even though they do not think America lives up to its own values. Welfarist anti-Americans also tend to strongly support American-style democracy and the United States' fight against terrorism. And sovereign-nationalist and legacy anti-Americans can often be pro-American outside of the specific events or times on which they base their resentment.

Unfortunately, a question, however good its intentions, that amalgamates diverse Middle Eastern views inadvertently creates further polarisation. Such an approach produces articles in major American publications with titles such as, "They Hate Us, They Really Hate Us" and "Anti-Americanism Is Racist Envy", creating divisions where none really existed, or strengthening them when they were far weaker than many had assumed.

Moving beyond such a question and accepting that there will be no simple answers is key. When we get caught up in sweeping generalisations, we fail to identify the root causes of conflict. These causes are crucial to assuring that dialogue addresses real problems and produces useful results. Conflict resolution theorists often stress the importance of identifying issues instead of focusing on positions. When parties focus on positions they are often distracted by general differences and fail to see similarities. When they delve deeper into the interests behind those positions, however, they find that there are many overlaps.

Ultimately, it is important to understand the nuances of our critics, not so that we can pander to them and compromise our values, but so that we can use effective diplomacy to uphold our values. While the many different forms of anti-Americanism may seem daunting and the temptation to dismiss them all as misled hatred is great, the attendance levels and interest in this recent lecture demonstrates a great interest in learning what drives people's perceptions of the United States and in finding creative ways to turn negative views into positive ones.

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* Marissa Ines Wilson is a senior at Cornell University, where she is studying conflict resolution. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), May 23, 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission is granted for publication.

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ARTICLE 2
The lost art
Neil Stormer

Washington, D.C. - Iran should take note. After more than 25 years, the United States has restored full diplomatic ties with Libya. Senior U.S. State Department officials hailed the development as the result of years of successful diplomacy.

If true, if credit should rest with skilled diplomats, it would be a welcome change in America's approach to foreign policy. For too long has the United States relied on its supremacy, at the expense of diplomacy, in order to get its way. Not everyone responds well to threats and bribes, but that has seemed to be all the United States has in its diplomatic arsenal.

Some in Washington, especially at the State Department, have expressed pleasure that George W. Bush's second term has been marked by an increase in the use of diplomacy to address issues on the international stage. You would be forgiven for not noticing — not many have.

Compared with the first term, the use of anything even resembling diplomacy — as opposed to bullying, threats and unilateralism — is grounds for celebration. America's diplomatic skills have seemingly atrophied from lack of use.

Proving this point, the United States has missed an opportunity ripe with possibility: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush last week provided a diplomatic opening in the otherwise terse and at times tense relations between the United States and Iran. Granted, Ahmadinejad's letter rambled a bit, and few would disagree that it represented an odd change of pace in what had become a predictable ping-pong match of name calling and finger pointing.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss the letter as a stall tactic or, worse, the work of a madman, as some on the far right suggest. While it may be a clever means of delaying what many had hoped would be action by the UN Security Council, it has significance in its own right.

To begin with, it was the first such diplomatic exchange between the United States and Iran in 27 years; that alone is noteworthy and warrants a serious response. The letter also touched on currents prevalent in the Middle East today — including America's intentions in the region and the seeming hypocrisy surrounding America's promotion of human rights while simultaneously abusing them — a matter of concern for America's friends and foes alike.

Iran analysts in the United States described the letter as a veiled offer to initiate discussions with the Bush administration, one intended to invite a considered response while not angering Iranian conservatives opposed to talks with the United States.

Iranian Vice President for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Ahmad Moussavi supported that analysis, stating: "If Bush gives a fair and reasoned reply to Ahmadinejad's letter, we will welcome it and regard is as a step in diplomacy and forging of understanding."

Accompanying the letter, though understandably drawing much less attention, was a memorandum released by the Iranian government outlining specific concessions it was willing to make in the pursuit of nuclear technologies.

Together, the documents represent a diplomatic opening through which one could drive a bulldozer, if slowly and with great care.

To date, the United States has offered no response, which is the diplomatic equivalent of a five-year-old child sticking its tongue out. In a slightly more mature, though still unpromising, reply, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed the letter as "an attack". It contained nothing directly about the nuclear issue, and therefore was of little use, according to the Bush administration.

To those better versed in the chess match that is international diplomacy, the letter represents the first step on a long road toward a mutually agreeable solution. Taking this path requires an appreciation of diplomacy as an art form, but also a great deal of patience and commitment to the means itself, and not necessarily to the end.

Cardinal Richelieu held that diplomacy should be a permanent dialogue conducted in the service of a permanent set of negotiations. This concept has been hard for the United States, especially this administration, to embrace. America's diplomacy has been shaped by its experiences, none more so than the cold war.

The primary objectives of the cold war era were focused on security: containment of communism and its national proponents, and military deterrence. Diplomacy and gentle persuasion withered on the vine while might and muscle determined America's relationship with other countries.

America didn't need to be diplomatic: countries were made to choose between the West and the East. If a country chose the former, the United States funded them generously; if they chose the latter, the United States contained, undermined and spied upon them. The lesson of the era is that diplomacy is not nearly as effective as ultimatums and bribes, and anything else simply took too long.

The end result is that diplomacy is seen in America as a lost art, an old, almost dead language, spoken by few and generally not very useful except when dealing with relics.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Diplomatic actions, such as talks between Iran and the United States, may not bring a solution to the variety of issues creating the chasm between the two countries. But the other options only increase enmity and raise the possibility of conflict and bloodshed.

Ahmadinejad's letter is not the solution. It is the beginning of finding a solution, but only if the United States can remember how to play the game in a skilful fashion.

###
* Neil Stormer and works in conflict resolution and foreign policy in Washington, D.C. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Jordan Times, May 17, 2006
Visit the website at http://www.jordantimes.com/
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 3
Winning the war of words in the campaign against terrorism
John Hughes

New York – The war against terrorism is also a war of words - words that capture the ideals and beliefs of the warring factions.

That the terrorists understand this was never made clearer than in the letter written by Osama bin Laden's principal lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, last year to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the insurgent leader in Iraq.

"More than half of the battle is taking place on the battlefield of the media", Mr. Zawahiri wrote. "We are in a media race for hearts and minds."

And last week came the 18-page letter from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush, the first from an Iranian leader to an American president in 27 years. It is clearly cast as a significant salvo against the United States, asserting the failure of Western-style democracy and the superiority of Islam.

The Iranian president concedes that Saddam Hussein (who engaged Iran in a long and costly war) was a "murderous dictator". But he suggests that Mr. Bush cannot be a "follower of Jesus Christ", for having gone to war in Iraq at terrible human cost.

Mr. Ahmadinejad also has harsh words for Israel, which he says has no credibility to exist. The Israeli "regime", he claims, shows no mercy "even to kids, destroys houses while the occupants are still in them, plans to assassinate Palestinian figures and keeps thousands of Palestinians in prison." Is (U.S.) support for this Israeli regime in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ, he asks.

The Iranian president says Hamas represents the Palestinian electorate and suggests that attempts to get Hamas to recognise Israel are "unbelievable".

He says the attacks of 9/11 on the United States were horrendous and the killing of innocents was appalling. But he makes no mention of the Muslim terrorists' role in the attacks and instead joins the conspiracy theorists who say orchestrating them was "not a simple operation", and could not have been planned and executed "without intelligence and security services".

His main thesis, clearly addressed to the Islamic world, is that Western-style democracy has failed and that "those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems."

To counter such fanciful arguments from the Islamic world, the U.S. government has been strengthening its response. Bush has installed his principal media adviser, Karen Hughes, as undersecretary for public diplomacy at the State Department. U.S. government radio broadcasting to the Islamic region, particularly Iran, has been ramped up. But years of downgrading and neglect since the end of the cold war have taken their toll on the government's once-effective structure for conducting public diplomacy throughout the world.

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the quality of government efforts to engage Muslim audiences abroad points up some serious deficiencies. Some 30 percent of public diplomacy specialists at diplomatic posts in the Islamic world lack the language skills to communicate with their target audiences. Dangerous security threats in many of those countries hinder attempts to reach out. Tours of duty are shorter than in more secure countries, resulting in much turnover and shortages of personnel.

Perhaps the most telling GAO criticism is that there is a lack of overall coordination where core messages, strategies, tactics, and in-depth research and analysis are concerned - a communication plan that would "bring it all together". The GAO suggests that government could take some tips from the private sector in the careful integration of public relations planning.

One of the bright spots is a program that has brought 600 high school students from the Muslim world to study in the United States and 170 college students for two years of academic study at American colleges or universities.

While such numbers are relatively small, programs like this, operated both by the government and the private sector, are effective in planting a friendlier view of America and Americans among a sliver of Muslim communities. Last week I attended a board meeting here of the non-profit International Center for Journalists which specialises in training programs, both on-site and in the United States, for journalists from less-developed countries.

Over the years it has built up an impressive worldwide network of journalists steeped in the traditions of a free press. They are potential opinion makers in their homelands and are now better prepared to detect what is truth and what is fiction in the war of words consuming many of their countries.

More of these kinds of exchange programs are essential.

###
* John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Christian Science Monitor, May 17, 2006
Visit the website at www.csmonitor.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright © The Christian Science Monitor. For reprint permission, please contact lawrenced@csps.com.

**********

ARTICLE 4
Bad news for everybody
Yossi Alpher

Tel Aviv - There appear to be a number of possible explanations why the Palestinian Authority could collapse into anarchy. Some observers argue that the Palestinians have proven themselves essentially ungovernable and uniquely inclined to make all the wrong decisions at the national level. Others that Israel and its occupation, directly and indirectly, are the primary catalyst of chaos. Still others fault the Oslo accords for generating a bad solution for Palestinian needs.

The school of thought informing and justifying the drive to impose the harshest possible economic sanctions on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority argues, in a Leninist fashion, that the worse things get in Palestine, the better they will eventually become. In other words, economic chaos will breed social, political and security chaos, bring down the Hamas government and produce something better in its place. To its credit the Olmert government, though inheriting the mantle of a policy that certainly contributed to the Palestinians' current plight, does not subscribe to this all-out approach. Together with the Quartet, it is now looking for ways to spend Palestinian monies and donor funds for the benefit of Palestinians, somehow hoping that this will prevent starvation and chaos but also not help Hamas solidify its rule.

The principal external actors, then, don't want a total collapse of the PA: only a partial collapse--enough to either discredit and replace Hamas or oblige it to moderate its attitude toward Israel, violence and a two-state solution. But one way or another, because we are dealing with an unprecedented situation in the annals of the conflict--indeed, in the annals of the modern Middle East--and because the economic and security situation in the West Bank and particularly Gaza is deteriorating rapidly, collapse is possible. Nor can we safely predict what "collapse" would look like: a Somalia-like situation, a Hamas-Fateh civil war or genuine socio-economic distress in a political void. At a minimum, it would be characterised by a severe setback for Palestinian democracy and large-scale human suffering.

This is bad news for Palestinians. But the potential consequences of collapse for those outside Palestine are also likely to be highly negative. First, the distress inside Palestine would generate unrest and agitation among large Palestinian populations living next door, in Israel and Jordan. This could have political consequences in both countries, particularly the Hashemite kingdom. Inside Palestine the situation would invite extremism, including Islamic extremism led by Hizbollah and al-Qaeda, both of whom have already been targeting and infiltrating the Palestinian conflict. This would affect the security situation among Palestine's neighbours.

Second, whatever remains (following the counterproductive elections in Iraq and Palestine) of the American democratic reform drive in the Arab world would be further discredited, having proven itself selective, anti-Islamic and ultimately destructive. The consequences for U.S.-Middle East policy would be felt from Morocco to Iraq. Moderate Arab reformers in those countries and in Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia, a small but important group of embattled secular democrats, would also be disgraced.

Assuming orderly governance was not quickly restored, Israel would come under heavy pressure from some international and domestic circles to, in effect, renew military government in order to stem the chaos and provide sustenance. Alternatively, or in parallel, pressure would increase for an "international solution" involving both foreign military forces and a major donor effort. Egypt and Jordan, which have thus far maintained their distance both politically and militarily, might now be called upon, against their better judgment, to play a major role.

Could something good also emerge from a collapse of governance in Palestine? Theoretically, it is possible that an alliance of Fateh-oriented strongmen (at least two: one for Gaza, one for the West Bank) could, with a little help from Israel, take over and even strike a peace deal that satisfies all of Jerusalem's territorial and national needs. Yet judging by the course of Palestinian history and the mood of the Palestinian street, this is highly unlikely.

Certainly it would be disastrous for all concerned if someone in Israel or elsewhere thought they could engineer such a productive coup in Palestine. If we have learned anything in nearly 40 years of occupation, it is that such schemes never turn out the way they're planned. Better that we devote our energies to preventing collapse--for lack of constructive alternative.

###
* Yossi Alpher is co-editor of the bitterlemons family of internet publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and a former senior adviser to PM Ehud Barak. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Bitterlemons-international.org (http://www.bitterlemons-international.org/), May 15, 2006
Visit the website at www.bitterlemons-international.org (http://www.bitterlemons-international.org/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 5
There are misperceptions on both sides
Lubna Hussain

Riyadh - During the King Faisal Prize ceremony in Riyadh last week I had an interesting encounter with an American businesswoman who was on her first visit to the Kingdom.

"So how have you found it so far?" I asked curious as to what her initial impressions were.

"I was really very impressed. It's not at all like I had imagined it to be."

This is a sentiment that is echoed by most people who come to Saudi Arabia from other parts of the world. The constant pictures that flood our television screens pertaining to the pitiful situation in Iraq has come to symbolise much of the Middle East for most people who have not otherwise experienced this region firsthand. The fact that our country has been singularly targeted as a nidus for terrorism and a hotbed of fanatics conjures up all sorts of perverse images within people's collective subconscious. I can't say I was surprised by what she had said, but it did leave me feeling a little despondent, especially considering that the Kingdom is a far safer place than most.

"Well, it's not as if the average American really cares about Saudi Arabia anyway", I conjectured.

"Did you use the word 'care'?" she asked astonished.

I nodded my head disinterestedly.

"No! I am sorry, but you are mistaken. They do care", she said emphatically. "In fact, they really care a lot. The biggest problem is that they just don't understand. They really don't."

"Yes, but they don't exactly try very hard to, do they?" I retorted with frustration. "And besides, I just don't think that people in Maine or Nevada are particularly bothered about what is going on here. From what I have seen, there are many Americans who don't even really know about what's going on outside their own state, leave alone in this part of the world. I think that the majority tends to see this country as part of the big amorphous Middle Eastern glob. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman. It's all the same."

"You're right in a way", she agreed, "but I have a question to ask you if I may. What do people here think of America?"

"I can't generalise, but I truly believe that as individuals we think that they are wonderful. It's your government that we have an axe to grind with, not good wholesome good-intentioned average Americans."

"Well, I am glad to hear that you separate the two. But tell me honestly, even though you are educated and seem to know quite a lot, don't you see Americans as being the same across the board?"

I thought about what she had just asked and suddenly realised that I did. I sheepishly admitted to my own short-sightedness and she stunned me further with the comment, "You see, misunderstandings exist on both sides."

What she said struck a chord deep within me. Here was this bright, successful woman who really had no vested interest in trying to unravel what it was that created and perpetuated such animosity, and yet part of the reason for her visiting Riyadh was to do just that. She genuinely wanted to meet with people here and learn from them about what it is that they thought and how it was that they felt.

"I think that my people really don't realise how important Saudi Arabia is as a country", she continued. "The fact that most of our oil and energy comes from here doesn't even occur to them. The fact that so many people in the world look to this country as their spiritual guide really doesn't register with the folks back home. It's only when you point this out to people that they actually begin to see it for what it is."

"I know what you mean", I asserted, "but you also have to recognise that we are a very proud people. We respect your country but this does not imply that we want to be 'liberated' by you or become a clone of you. We have our own code of morality and system of government. Our culture and tradition cannot be usurped by the ubiquitous M sign. Yes, we want to improve ourselves, but we don't want your ideas of what constitutes a democracy superimposed upon us. There is no single magic formula that works for every country. We want to develop our own without being dictated to."

"That's totally right", she confirmed. "And that's another problem of misperception. Because we have had democracy right from the beginning, we don't tend to recognise any other form of workable system. What I think would be far more productive and effective would be to see how we can help you achieve the kind of change that you want to achieve, not the kind of change we want to see."

What ensued over the next hour or so was the development of a greater mutual understanding between us. Rather than reinforcing stereotypes and fortifying our individual positions of sanctimony and belligerence, we began to see things more clearly from the other side. I realised that there must be many individuals like this who aren't consumed by some sort of irrational hatred for us, but are just unaware of who we are and what we want. That at the end of the day if there was more exchange of views and ideas between people from opposing sides that the slight shift in perceptions that this would bring about would eventually culminate in a better understanding of everyone. That if such a thing were to happen then the world would indeed be a much better place, albeit with a lot of unemployed politicians.

###
* Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer based in Riyadh. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Arab View, April 7, 2006
Visit Arab View online: http://www.arabview.com (http://www.arabview.com/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

**********

The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) provides news, op-eds, features and analysis by local and international experts on a broad range of issues affecting Muslim-Western relations. CGNews-PiH syndicates articles that are balanced and solution-oriented to news outlets worldwide. With support from the Norwegian government and the United States Institute of Peace, this news service is a non-profit initiative of Search for Common Ground, an international NGO working in the field of conflict transformation.

This news service is one outcome of a set of working meetings held in partnership with His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan in June 2003.

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CGNews-PiH also regularly publishes the work of student leaders and journalists whose articles strengthen intercultural understanding and promote constructive perspectives and dialogue in their own communities. Student journalists and writers under the age of 27 are encouraged to write to cbinkley@sfcg.org for more information on contributing.
*The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors, not of CGNews-PiH or its affiliates.

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All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity
by Robert W. Fuller
Available in June 2006 from Berrett-Koehler Publishers

• By the author of the bestselling Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank
• Argues that rankism—abuse of the power that comes with superior rank—does serious damage to our private relationships and public institutions
• Details how to design social institutions that overcome rankism and protect human dignity

In his groundbreaking book Somebodies and Nobodies, Robert Fuller identified a form of domination that everyone has experienced but few dare to protest: rankism, abuse of the power inherent in rank to exploit and humiliate someone of lower rank. It plays a role in just about every form of social oppression—racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious intolerance all have a significant element of rankism in them.

Most everyone has felt the sting of rankism—at the hands of a dictatorial boss, a condescending teacher, an arrogant doctor, or an imperious bureaucrat. But, equally, most everyone has inflicted it on someone of lower rank. That we are, all of us, both victims and perpetrators of rankism mandates a novel, multifaceted strategy for confronting it.

Fuller isn’t proposing that we do away with rank—without it organizations become dysfunctional. He’s not advocating an egalitarian society where all are equal in rank but rather a “dignitarian” one where all are equal in dignity: a society in which rankholders are held accountable, rankism is shunned, and dignity is broadly protected.

In All Rise, Fuller lays the groundwork for a dignitarian society by delineating the scope and impact of rankism and then shows how a dignitarian movement can defeat it by addressing issues such as What would workplaces, schools, health-care organizations, politics, religion, and international relations look like if they were to embody dignitarian values? What policies could we develop to defend dignity in our various social institutions? How can we embody these principles in our lives and create a culture of universal dignity?

All Rise offers hope and practical solutions for fashioning a world where human relationships are governed by respect and every person’s right to dignity is affirmed.

Publication date: June 2006, $22.95, hardcover, 216 pages, 6 1/8” x 9 1/4”
ISBN 978-1-57675-385-9 (or 1-57675-385-9) Item #93859-690

Order online: www.bkconnection.com
Call toll-free: 1-800-929-2929
Fax your order to: (802) 864-7626
Send orders to: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, PO Box 565, Williston, BK VT 05495

Robert W. Fuller has a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University,
taught at Columbia University, and coauthored Mathematics of
Classical and Quantum Physics. At age 33, he was appointed president
of Oberlin College, his alma mater. After Oberlin, he became a citizendiplomat
and served as board chair of the global nonprofit Internews while developing the analysis that lies at the heart of Somebodies and Nobodies and All Rise.

Educating for Global Peace
spiritual & ethical perspectives on peace & justice

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Please join us for this timely and provocative lecture series exploring spiritual and ethical perspectives on peace and justice towards educating for global peace. The first talk in the series, "ACTING for OTHERS: Spiritual Dimensions of the work of Nobel Peace Laureates." will be June 1, featuring Arthur Zajonc, Professor of Physics at Amherst College and Director of the Academic Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.

ACTING FOR OTHERS:
SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS OF THE WORK OF NOBEL PEACE LAUREATES

ARTHUR ZAJONC
Professor of Physics, Amherst College; Director, Academic Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society

Thursday, June 1. 7-9pm.
Location: Teachers College, Columbia University (Milbank Chapel - 125 Main)
click here for directions to Teachers College

Based on the study of twelve Nobel Peace Prize winners, this presentation will examine the degree to which these individuals were sustained and guided by deep ethical and spiritual resources. In interviews and writings, time and again they speak of others with whom and for whom they worked, which underscores the importance of community. During dark times of imprisonment and torture as well as in periods of success, the Nobel laureates placed their suffering and actions within a larger spiritual context, which acted as an inner basis for sustaining sanity and even compassion under terrible circumstances. Again and again the violence they experienced was answered by the power of nonviolence. Through examples, these and similar characteristics of the important work of Nobel peace laureates will be used as a window into the deeper ethical and spiritual sources of peace work.

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ARTHUR ZAJONC
Arthur Zajonc is professor of physics at Amherst College, where he has taught since 1978. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He has been visiting professor and research scientist at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, and the universities of Rochester, and Hannover. He has been Fulbright professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. His research has included studies in parity violation in atoms, the experimental foundations of quantum physics, and the relationship between sciences, the humanities and contemplation. He has written extensively on Goethe’s science. He is author of the book: Catching the Light, co-author of The Quantum Challenge, and co-editor of Goethe’s Way of Science. In 1997 he served as scientific coordinator for the Mind and Life dialogue with H.H. the Dalai Lama published as The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama (Oxford 2004). He again organized the 2002 dialogue with the Dalai Lama, “The Nature of Matter, the Nature of Life,” and acted as moderator at MIT for the “Investigating the Mind” dialogue in 2003 (www.mindandlife.org). He currently directs the Academic Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind which supports appropriate inclusion of contemplative practice in higher education. He has also been General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America (1994-2002), co-founder of the Kira Institute (www.kira.org), president of the Lindisfarne Association, and a senior program director at the Fetzer Institute. He is currently writing a book on the peace work of twelve Nobel peace laureates.

~ free and open to the public ~ RSVP requested ~
Please note that lectures will take place at different venues.
Please contact the Peace Education Center for additional detail and to RSVP.
email: peace-ed@tc.edu / phone: (212) 678-8116

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FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE “EDUCATING FOR GLOBAL PEACE” LECTURE SERIES PLEASE VISIT US ON THE WEB AT WWW.TC.EDU/PeaceEd.

Thursday, June 1. 7-9pm
ACTING FOR OTHERS:
SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS OF THE WORK OF NOBEL PEACE LAUREATES
ARTHUR ZAJONC
Professor of Physics, Amherst College; Director, Academic Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Location: Teachers College, Columbia University (Milbank Chapel - 125 Main Hall)

Saturday, November 4. 1-3pm
EDUCATING FOR PEACE AT THE LEVEL OF OUR DEEP HUMANITY
PATRICIA MISCHE
Lloyd Professor of Peace Studies and World Law, Antioch College; Visiting Professor, School of International Service, American University; Co-founder and current President , Global Education Associates
Location: The Riverside Church

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Co-Sponsors
The Peace Education Center seeks to provide learning opportunities to inform wider public and academic audiences about critical and timely peace related issues. Peace related concerns are the concerns of all members of the human community. The Peace Education Center is pleased to work with several co-sponsors, from various disciplines and vocations, in the planning of this lecture series. Please take the time to introduce yourself to the work of our co-sponsors by clicking the links below.

Barnard Education Program; Biosophical Institute; The Center for the Contemplative Mind in Society; Fellowship of Reconciliation; Fordham University's Graduate School of Education; Global Education Associates; International Center for Tolerance Education; Peace Boat USA; Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding; Teachers College - Forum on the Role of Religion and Spirituality in Education, Office of Diversity and Community, and Office of the Vice President and Dean of the College; Temple of Understanding; The Riverside Church Mission and Social Justice Department

Companies that Care: Best Practices Road Show

Please Join Us
May 24, 2006
8:30 am - 12:00 pm

�� Learn the 10 Characteristics of Companies That Care
�� Discover Best Practices of Companies That Care of all sizes
�� Find out how companies can impact New York community needs
�� Share your experience - Collaborate on community action

Who Should Attend
People able to drive change within their organizations: Human Resources,
Work/Life, Diversity, Corporate Citizenship/Community Affairs, Corporate
Communication, Business Unit Executives, Performance Managers, etc.

Program
8:30 am: Continental Breakfast and Networking
9:00 am: Welcome
What Is a Company That Cares
Best Practices of Companies That Care
Needs in Our Community and How Your Company Can Help
11:00 am: Roundtable Discussions
12:00 pm: Close

Where
KPMG LLP
345 Park Avenue
New York, NY
www.companies-that-care.org

Cost and Registration
$75 - includes breakfast and program
Please register online at www.companies-that-care.org/givingstore
For more information - www.companies-that-care.org
Companies That Care Best Practices Road Show
Event Sponsor and Host: KPMG LLP

AfricAvenir News are kindly sent out by Eric Van Grasdorff:

Liebe Freunde,

hiermit möchten wir Sie ganz herzlich zum nächsten Film in der Reihe "African Perspectives" am kommenden Sonntag einladen. Gezeigt wird der nigerianische Film "Raging Storm". Erinnern möchten wir Sie außerdem an das morgige Dialogforum mit Martha Mamozai: Frauen und Kolonialismus - Eine weibliche Variante des "Herrenmenschentums", um 19.00 Uhr im Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte.

Raging Storm
Nigeria 1998, 90 min, OmeU
R: Francis K. Onwochei

Im Rahmen der Filmreihe "African Perspectives" laden AfricAvenir International, die Initiative Südliches Afrika (INISA) und der South African Club Berlin am Sonntag, den 28. Mai, um 17.15 Uhr zur Filmvorführung von Francis K. Onwocheis "Raging Storm" in das Berliner Filmtheater Hackesche Höfe, mit anschließender Diskussion, ein.

Am: Sonntag, den 28. Mai 2006
Beginn: 17.15 Uhr
Ort: Filmtheater Hackesche Höfe (Rosenthaler Str. 40/41; 10178 Berlin)
Vorbestellung: 030/283 46 03 (Mo-Sa ab 14.30 Uhr/So ab 10.30 Uhr)
Eintritt: 5 Euro

Kurzinhalt
Steve (F. Onwochei) wird in den Olohi-Kult eingeführt. Den Anhängern dieses Kults wird ‘geholfen’, indem sie im Gegenzug für eine kleine Geldsumme deren hundertfachen Betrag erhalten sollen. Steve macht daraufhin die schlimmsten Erfahrungen seines Lebens. Ein Film aus der boomenden Filmindustrie Nigerias über plötzlichen Reichtum und okkulte Ökonomie.

Regisseur
Francis K. Onwochei begann seine Karriere 1985 als Schauspieler am National Arts Theatre in Lagos, Nigeria. Seit 1990 arbeitet er in der dort neu entstehenden Filmszene und produzierte u. a. die Spielfilme Raging Storm, Final Onslaught (1998), Tansi (1999) und Saving Alero (2000). Er führte Regie bei zahlreichen TV-Serien, Filmberichten und Werbespots. 1991 schloss er sein Studium der Kartographie und Vermessung an der Federal School of Surveying in Oyo, Nigeria ab. Francis Onwochei ist derzeit Generalsekretär der Independent Television Producers Association of Nigeria (ITPAN) und Generaldirektor der Frankochei Productions Limited, einem Film- und Fernsehunternehmen in Lagos.

—–
African Perspectives ist eine monatlich stattfindende Filmreihe, in deren Rahmen aktuelle afrikanische Filme präsentiert werden.

In Kooperation mit dem Filmtheater Hackesche Höfe und mit freundlicher Unterstützung von der LEZ (Landeszentrale für Entwicklungszusammenarbeit bei der Senatsverwaltung für Wirtschaft, Arbeit und Frauen), der Stiftung Umverteilen und South African Airways.

Medienpartner: Radio Multikulti

Ständig aktuelle Informationen auf:
www.africavenir.org
www.inisa.de
www.south-african-club-berlin.de

www.AfricAvenir.org
Wollen Sie Fördermitglied von AfricAvenir International e.V. werden?
Kontaktieren Sie Ann Kathrin Helfrich, Fon: 030-80906789, a.helfrich@africavenir.org

Redaktion des Newsletters: Eric Van Grasdorff, e.vangrasdorff@africavenir.org
AfricAvenir International e.V. ist nicht für die Inhalte externer Webseiten verantwortlich.

On 21/05/2006, Michelle Sherman, Michelle kindly wrote:

Hi Dr. Lindner,

My name is Michelle Sherman, and I'm a psychologist in Oklahoma City (at the VA Hospital and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center). I'm writing to let you know about a new resource that I hope will be of interest to you.

In my non-VA life, I (along with my mom, a teacher) have written a new book for teens. The book supports teens dealing with parental trauma and is called "Finding My Way: A Teen's Guide to Living with a Parent Who Has Experienced Trauma" (available at www.seedsofhopebooks.com or 1-800-901-3480). "Finding My Way" is a first-of-its-kind interactive workbook that provides clear information, opportunities for reflection and journaling, tips on healthy coping skills, help in identifying supportive people and in dealing with friends, and, most importantly, encouragement and hope. Given the heightened risk for these youth developing their own problems, "Finding My Way" can serve as prevention and early intervention for at-risk youth.

In light of your expertise in understanding trauma reactions and supporting survivors/families--and given the dearth of resources for teens -- I thought you may find this book of interest. If you wish to learn more about us and our work, you can check out our website at:

www.seedsofhopebooks.com

I hope this is useful to you in your work.......best wishes, Michelle

PS. Later this summer we will release our 2nd book, I'M NOT ALONE: A TEEN'S GUIDE TO LIVING WITH A PARENT WITH A MENTAL ILLNESS. This book will be quite similar in format and mission, but will support teenagers coping with a parental mental illness, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression.

Michelle D. Sherman, Ph.D.
Director, Family Mental Health Program
Oklahoma City VA Medical Center
Co-Chair, Family Studies Team,
South Central Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC)
Clinical Associate Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Dear Spanish-speaking friend!
Stephanie Heuer needs help! Her book is being translated into Spanish.
Please see further down the message that Sando, the CEO of the publishing company, sent to her.
Most warmly!
Evelin

Dear Stephanie,

Sounds great! I finished the translation on Thursday and we should be able to have a Spanish-language dummy by Monday. However, I still am not really sure about the "I feel like somebody / nobody" mechanism in Spanish. Let me explain why:

In English, kids readily understand the concept of "I feel like somebody (important)" and "I feel like a nobody." In Spanish this can be said, but it would be quite elevated, as language:

"Me siento alguien cuando...". Not at all in the realm of children's everyday expression.

The negative part is harder:

"Me siento nadie cuando...". This is definitely beyond the linguistic pale for kids.

We are doing some field research on the subject in a school here in Mexico City. This person has a week to see what kids respond to. This person is a teacher and understands what you are getting at in your book. She also has the translation I did.

I am thinking that perhaps, the least important part of this decision is how the "title" in itself sounds (the perfect opposites represented by "somebody / nobody." Perhaps it would be wiser to make sure that the statements in themselves are absolutely clear in plain Spanish that would sound natural in the mouths of children.

Let's see:

Me siento feliz cuando...
Me siento triste cuando...

This is the basic idea but it lacks the feeling of being obliterated, in the negative : "I feel like nobody when..." And it lacks the idea of "I feel important when...", in the positive.

Do you see what the quandry is? It would be easy to just say: "Let's do it this way and hope for the best." But I think it' important that you understand what the problem is because you know what is at stake. My question is, just how important is it that the the person aspect of the phrasing be in the statements ("nobody, somebody")?

If this is absolutely essential, the "feliz / triste" option is no good. If it is not absolutely essential, this option will probably do just fine, or any other every-day language synonyms. I realize that the phrasing comes from the book you sent me, that this is a whole line of thinking and research. But, how important is it that the literal "somebody / nobody" equation be carried literally into the Spanish. Or to put it another way, how would you phrase it in English not using the the "somebody / nobody" equation?

Let that be your homework for the next few days! Give me an alternate title in English that would mean the same thing, only without the "somebody / nobody" equation. And make sure it would sound natural in the mouths of children.

Could you give that a try? Then I think we would be set.

Best regards,
Sandro

MEET THE AUTHOR SEMINAR
Dignity and Peace Education

Stephanie Heuer
Editor/Narrator
(408)-506-5603
author@somebodybook.com
WWW.SOMEBODYBOOK.com

My name is Stephanie Heuer, and I am the editor and narrator of an inspiring and uplifting children’s book called;

I Feel Like Nobody When…
I Feel Like Somebody When..,”

Currently, I am offering an onsite book reading and informative seminar targeting students at elementary and middle school grades, which concentrates on issues of dignity and LIFESKILL application for conflict resolution and recognition. The book illustrates for the students different scenarios and how those situations may make them feel. This unique book expresses vividly the lands of Somebodies and Nobodies through the eyes of our youth. The school visit can be in an assembly forum or classroom presentation and includes:

• Slide presentation of Somebody/Nobody Scenarios
• LIFESKILLS™ Response and Development
• Discussion on writing books, what inspires us, and how to write your own S/N book

For an optional assignment, I asked a variety of students at different grade levels and schools to complete the above two statements anonymously. The results are an assortment of fresh and honest responses that are fascinating and inspiring to read. This poignant collection comes directly from the hearts of our children and speaks to us in their sincere voices. Through feedback and discussion, we learn about how to counter act negative comments, reinforce positive ones, and recognize lifelong guidelines we want to embrace.

If you are interested in the above seminar, send an email to author@somebodybook.com, or call 408 506 5603. Cost reductions apply if two or more schools in your area register, (Standard Fee: $400.00).

ISBN 1-4208-6802-0

AfricAvenir News are kindly sent out by Eric Van Grasdorff:

Liebe Freunde,

Dialogforum: Frauen und Kolonialismus – Eine weibliche Variante des "Herrenmenschentums"
Am Dienstag, den 23. Mai 2006 um 19.00 Uhr lädt AfricAvenir im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe african reflections in das Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte zum Dialogforum mit Martha Mamozai. Mehr denn je ist Rassismus in unseren heutigen Gesellschaften präsent. Dieses ganz spezifische Kapitel der Geschichte (Frauen und Kolonialismus) lehrt uns, uns selbst gegenüber wachsam zu sein, denn niemand ist per se davor gefeit, rassistisch zu denken oder zu handeln – auch nicht Frauen, die fälschlicherweise oft und gerne "als das bessere Geschlecht" betrachtet werden. http://africavenir.com/news/2006/05/423

African Perspectives: Raging Storm
Im Rahmen der Filmreihe „African Perspectives“ laden AfricAvenir International, die Initiative Südliches Afrika (INISA) und der South African Club Berlin am Sonntag, den 28. Mai, um 17.15 Uhr zur Filmvorführung von Francis K. Onwocheis “Raging Storm” in das Berliner Filmtheater Hackesche Höfe ein. http://africavenir.com/news/2006/03/355

Festival des afrikanischen Films bei AfricAvenir in Douala
Vom 17. Mai bis 17. Juni 2006 präsentiert die Stiftung AfricAvenir in Douala 19 Filme afrikanischer Regisseure, die auch bei den « Etats Généraux du cinéma noir » in Paris und auf dem 13. « Festival du Film Africain à New York » gezeigt wurden. Es handelt sich um Filme in afrikanischen Sprachen mit französischen Untertiteln. http://africavenir.com/news/2006/05/430/430

------------

WEITERE VERANSTALTUNGSHINWEISE

Literarischer Afrika-Abend Im Berliner Ensemble
Am Donnerstag, den 25. Mai 2006 um 19 Uhr findet im Rahmen der Jahrestagung des Internationalen P.E.N. im Theater am Schiffsbauerdamm ein literarischer Afrika-Abend statt. Zugesagt haben Nadine Gordimer (Südafrika), Meja Mwangi (Kenia), Veronique Tadjo (Elfenbeinküste), Patrice Nganang (Kamerun) und Lesego Rampolokeng (Südafrika). Der Abend wird musikalisch von Patrick Bebey (Kamerun/Paris) begleitet. http://africavenir.com/news/2006/05/433

Joséphine Baker. Schwarze Diva in einer weißen Welt
Am Samstag, den 27. Mai um 19 Uhr findet eine Preview des neuen Films von Annette von Wangenheim statt. Der Dokumentarfilm konzentriert sich auf ihr Leben und Werk aus schwarzer Perspektive und portraitiert die Künstlerin erstmals im Spiegel europäischer Kolonial-Klischees und als Aktivistin der weltweiten Black Consciousness-Bewegung des 20. Jahrhunderts. Erstausstrahlung auf 3sat am 2. Juni 2006, 20.15. http://africavenir.com/news/2006/04/417

Pan African Day - Ein Jahr Afrika-Rat
Am Samstag, den 27. Mai 2006 ab 13:30 feiert der Afrika-Rat – Dachverband afrikanischer Vereine und Initiativen Berlin-Brandenburg – sein einjähriges Bestehen. Aus diesem Anlass will der Afrika-Rat im Rahmen seines ersten Pan African Day die Vielfalt von Aktivitäten in und mit der afrikanischen Diaspora in Berlin und Brandenburg präsentieren. Er wird seine bisherige Arbeit vorstellen, über Erreichtes und Schwierigkeiten berichten, seine Rolle innerhalb der MigrantInnen-Community erläutern, die Zusammenarbeit mit der weltweiten afrikanischen Diaspora und dem afrikanischen Kontinent thematisieren und Pläne für künftige Aktivitäten und Visionen für das Leben als Teil der Berliner und Brandenburger Gesellschaft erläutern. Ein reger Austausch ist gewünscht. Das Feiern wird dabei selbstverständlich nicht zu kurz kommen.

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Welcome to World Peace Forum Society 2006

The World Peace Forum 2006 is an international gathering of individuals, groups and civic governments from cities and communities to envision a living culture of peace and sustainability in our lifetimes. The success of this event depends on all of us. We can work together in the journey to peace!

Program:

The World Peace Forum 2006 will organize panels, workshops, public forums, arts and entertainment activities and networking events to offer all participants an open space for discussion and performance within the main theme of Cities and Communities: Working together to end war and build a peaceful, just and sustainable world.

The mission of the Forum is to create a global culture of peace. This is how we propose to implement our mission:

1. Publish a World Peace Forum statement, “Building a Culture of Peace and Sustainability,” for the global community, outlining what individuals, communities, cities, groups, and nations can do locally to create a culture of peace and sustainability.
2. Create an ongoing legacy of bi-annual World Peace Forums, in cities around the world, to refine, promote, and expand the culture of peace and sustainability.
3. Encourage communities and nations to plan for peace, for example, by inaugurating Departments of Peace at city, regional, and national levels of government.
4. Celebrate and protect diversity of culture locally and globally.
5. Make war abhorrent, peace popular, and the restoration and protection of our global ecosystems a priority.

The World Peace Forum 2006 program will follow these four guiding threads throughout the conference:

Economy of Peace
Social Justice and Peace
Environment and Peace
Culture and Peace

The final version of the program will be ready shortly. In the meantime, we would like to share a summary of what the World Peace Forum is preparing for June 2006. Download the program schedule and the program highlights in PDF format.

We will be pleased to receive your comments. Please, contact us. Check our website regularly for updated information.

Contact:

World Peace Forum Staff
World Peace Forum 2006
550 West 6th Avenue, Suite 420
Vancouver, BC Canada V5Z 1A1
Tel: 604 687 3223
Fax: 604 687 3277
http://www.worldpeaceforum.ca

For general inquiries you can send us an email at admin@worldpeaceforum.ca or contact the World Peace Forum 2006 staff:
Jef Keighley
Executive Director Outreach
jkeighley@worldpeaceforum.ca
Ext. 101

Rex Weyler
Program Coordinator
rweyler@worldpeaceforum.ca
Ext. 102

Karen Dean
Fundraising Coordinator
kdean@worldpeaceforum.ca
Ext. 103

DJ Lampitt
Communications Coordinator
djlampitt@worldpeaceforum.ca
Ext. 109

Linda Shuto
Volunteer Coordinator
lshuto@worldpeaceforum.ca
Ext. 106

Whitney Larsen
Youth Outreach
youth_outreach@worldpeaceforum.ca
Ext. 105

Tania Aguila
Administrative / Venues Coordinator
taguila@worldpeaceforum.ca
Ext. 100

CALL FOR PAPERS

Journal of the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

The Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict, the journal of the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, ISSN 1095-1962, publishes a variety of scholarly articles, essays, and poetry on topics such as war, peace, global cooperation, domestic violence, and interpersonal conflict resolution; including questions of military and political security, the global economy, and global environmental issues. We wish to promote discussion of both strategic and ethical questions surrounding issues of war, peace, the environment, and justice.

The Wisconsin Institute is committed to a balanced review of diverse perspectives. Submissions are welcome from all disciplines. Our intended audience includes scholars from a wide range of interests within the university community and educated members of the larger public. The format allows the publication of original previously-unpublished works of sufficient length to give authors the opportunity to discuss a particular topic in depth. Other forms of creative writing are invited. Contributors should avoid submissions accessible only to specialists in their field. The Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict may also include book reviews. Persons interested in reviewing should contact the editor.

Submissions should be a maximum of 25 pages, double-spaced. All manuscripts should be composed in MS Word using Bookman Old Style, 10-point font. Citations are to be in the body of the text, e.g., (Jones, p.35), with a full bibliography at the end of the article. Do not use footnotes. Content notes should be placed at the end of the manuscript. Include separately a brief bio statement with a note that includes your institution, your email and mailing addresses, and work phone number.
Submissions for 2006-2007 issue are due preferably June 16, 2006, the latest date would be September 1.
Five copies of each submission should be sent to the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, UWSP, LRC, 900 Reserve Street, Stevens Point, WI 54481.
In addition, supply the manuscript electronically to wiinst@uwsp.edu.

Visit our website for more information: www.wisconsin-institute.org

International Trauma Studies Program
Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

Training Program in International Trauma Studies
September 2006 to May 2007, New York City
Admission deadline: May 31, 2006

Founded in New York in 1997, the International Trauma Studies Program
(ITSP) http://www.itspnyc.org
has achieved worldwide recognition as a leader in the field of trauma
studies and community response to catastrophes. Our distinctive
program is committed to global education promoting state-of-the-art
knowledge, research, and the development of technical skills to
assist people in coping with traumatic events. Our trauma and
disaster response Training Program based in New York has attracted
professionals from all over the world. The International Trauma
Studies Program is based at the Program on Forced Migration and
Health in the Department of Population and Family Health at the
Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.

The Training Program presents current individual, family and
community oriented approaches based on a resilience framework. The
course explores best practices in international psychosocial response
in the contexts of domestic, communal, and political violence,
natural and human caused catastrophes and forced migration. In
addition to trauma theory and intervention, the Training Program
intertwines the psychosocial, political, ethical, and human rights
dimensions of traumatic suffering and humanitarian intervention into
the curriculum.

The International Trauma Studies Program’s multidisciplinary
approach bridges disciplines ranging from mental health and community
development, to the arts, literature, performance, oral history, and
the media. The Training Program builds competency in the practice
and implementation of trauma responses through practical skill
building for everyday work and life.

Format of the Course

Nine intensive one and a half day Symposia from September to May run
by visiting local and international faculty who are renowned experts
in the trauma field:

The class meets twice every month, roughly every two weeks. The
Symposia, which are nine intensive one and half day workshops, are
scheduled Thursday, 4:00-7:30pm and the next day Friday, 9:30am -
5:00pm. The nine monthly integrative Salons are scheduled on a
subsequent Thursday evening from 6:00-8:30pm. This is especially
designed to allow working professionals to attend the course. The
course consists of 130 training hours. The exact dates for the
upcoming 2006-2007 session have not yet been established.

Nine monthly integrative Salons provides participants opportunities
to share their own work and host visiting experts.

Class Project that actively integrates theory and methods taught in
the course.

Voluntary Externships in a research group, clinical or community
setting, available for local and international participants who wish
to enhance their learning experience.

Curriculum

Current topical events and access to special faculty and presenters
may influence the specific focus of the subject area from year to
year. This flexibility allows the program to bring to participants a
state of the art curriculum enriching the educational experience at
ITSP. The basic topic areas covered include:

Comprehensive Approach to Trauma and Psychosocial Response
- Multi-systemic Framework for Trauma, Understanding, Healing, and Prevention
- History and Theories of Trauma and Loss
- Overview of Assessment, Clinical and Community Interventions
- Taking Care of Caretakers

Working with Children, Families, and Communities
- Trauma in a Developmental Context
- Therapeutic Approaches with Children and Families
- Trauma and Loss in the Family
- Facilitating Resilience in Families, Schools and Communities

International Mental Health and Psychosocial Response in Complex
Emergencies
- Introduction to International Organizations, Human Rights, and Legal Instruments
- Impact of War, Disaster and Forced Migration
- Creating Sustainable Psychosocial Programs
- Cultural Competence and Collaboration
- Needs Assessment, Monitoring and Evaluation

Trauma and Society: Trans-Disciplinary Collaborations
- Assisting Survivors and their Communities in the Context of Transitional Justice,Coexistence and Reconciliation
- Testimony, Witnessing and Collective Narration
- Role of the Arts and Media in Promoting Individual and Collective Recovery

Faculty and Presenters

Course Professor: Jack Saul, Ph.D.; Director, International Trauma
Studies Program; Faculty, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia
University

Over the years, ITSP has developed a distinguished, well-recognized
international panel of experts to teach in the course. Our unique
approach to teaching enables ITSP to bring in specialists from
different expertise, each one working on and developing the most
cutting edge practices, research, and technology in the field of
trauma. Each Symposium and many of the Salons are taught by
different experts with specific competence in their respective
fields. Recent visiting faculty includes:

Nancy Baron, Ed.D., Sandra Bloom, M.D., Pauline Boss, Ph.D., Claude
Chemtob, Ph.D., Sara Cobb, Ph.D., Esther Cohen, Ph.D., Allen Feldman,
Ph.D., Peter Fraenkel, Ph.D., Brandon Hamber, Ph.D., Kenneth Hardy,
Ph.D., Soeren Buus Jensen, M.D. Ph.D., Judith Landau, M.D., Esther
Perel, M.A., Steven Reisner, Ph.D., Carlos Sluzki, M.D., Ruti Teitel,
J.D., Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., Vamik Volkan, M.D., Stevan Weine, M.D.

Tuition: $4800

Scholarships
ê ITSP offers 2 full tuition scholarships to mental health
professionals and community leaders from foreign countries or
immigrant and refugee communities in the New York metropolitan area.
In addition, there are limited opportunities for partial tuition
scholarships with a work/study component. Please inquire to the
program directly for details.

Admissions Deadline: May 31, 2006

Enrollment is limited to 30 participants per year. Early application
is encouraged.

Download Applications:
http://www.itspnyc.org/ITSP_Application0607.pdf [PDF file]
http://www.itspnyc.org/ITSP_Application06_07.doc [Word document]

For further information, contact:
International Trauma Studies Program
Mailman School of Public Health
Columbia University
155 Avenue of the Americas 4th Floor
New York, NY 10013
Tel 212.691.6499 Fax 212.807.1809
Email info@itspnyc.org
Website http://www.itspnyc.org

Palestinian Counseling Center (PCC) Web Site

Dear Friends and Partners,

We would like to inform you that we have updated our website in both English and Arabic. New information is mainly on the Arabic site and includes new articles and brochures, a data base on psychology, social work and Educational counseling. On the English Website you will find useful articles regarding the impact of the Israeli Separation Wall on Palestinian mental health, articles on making a career decision among Palestinian adolescents, in addition to news about the PCC activities, facilities and programs. New articles and information will be added regularly to the site.

Mental Well-Being: To Build a Balance Between an Individual and Her/His Environment
Siham Rashid
Director, Public Relations Department
Palestinian Counseling Center (PCC)
P.O. Box 17402
Jerusalem 91173
pcc@palnet.com
http://www.pcc-jer.org
tel: 972 2 656 2272
fax: 972 2 656 2271

Share the World's Resources

The Political Economy of Love And The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in The World

Main Argument or Hypothesis

The main argument or hypothesis of this short essay is that to eradicate extreme poverty in the world – which, with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, climate change due to pollution, and various forms of violence (war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism), is one of the four or five most dangerous challenges facing humanity today – the primacy of reason needs, in particular in the distribution of the world’s resources, to be replaced by the primacy of love. That inevitably will lead to a better, more equal and more just, sharing of the world’s resources. This is the meaning of the concept of the ‘political economy of love’ in the title of this essay, which can be seen as superseding the ‘political economy of reason’, which has been, one way or the other (in the liberal and Marxist senses) the dominant concept until now. [1]

I begin with tentative definitions and/or explanations of the three key theoretical concepts mentioned above: political economy, primacy of reason and primacy of love.

POLITICAL ECONOMY

The concept of political economy was first coined, by classical economists, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was later appropriated by Marxists and is presently used by both the Marxists and the liberal economists, even if what they mean by it is different. For the liberals political economy generally means that the political and economic aspects of life in society are related, and they include power relations into that relationship. For the Marxists the concept is far more involved and includes: a) how goods and services are produced by a combination of capital (including technology) and labour; b) how income is generated, and wealth accumulated by means of that production; and c) how, finally, that wealth is used to acquire power and social status in society. The reality is that relations between capital and labour have been in constant flux: capital has often dominated and exploited labour; but, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that has not prevented labour from making some important gains. The emergence of trade unions and national legislations seeking to improve the working conditions in the factories have been, after the Industrial Revolution, important gains for labour. In the last two decades or so, globalisation, that is, the penetration of world markets by multinational corporations in search of profit, has primarily benefited capital. But, again, increasing productivity and, concomitantly, rising wages in the rich and in the ‘emerging’ [2] countries have also benefited labour.

Wealth and power have always had an incestuous relationship: wealth has been used to acquire power; and, vice versa, power, to acquire wealth. Presently incestuous relationship appears to be accelerating all over the world. In the rich and, increasingly, in the ‘emerging’ countries, wealth is massively converted into political power. In the United States, for example, the extremely rich are allowed to spend millions of dollars of their own money in election campaigns, distorting thus, to say the least, the spirit, if not the letter, of the democratic political process. It is (in the spring of 2006) estimated that in the next American presidential elections (of 2008) no less than one billion dollars will be spent by the two major Republican and the Democratic candidates, doubling thus the US$ 500 million spent in 2004. In the poor countries, it is the opposite that is happening: power in the form of ‘grand’ corruption is used widely by the political elites to acquire immense wealth that is taken out of the country. [3]

A related development is the rapid growth of the extremely rich. That development is taking two forms: individuals or families; and countries that are major exporters of petroleum and natural gas. These two forms are, of course, linked. According to a recent Bloomberg report, there were, in 2005, one million individuals/families whose wealth exceeded US$10 million; and that number is expected to almost double, in 2008, to 1.9 million. [4] As for the oil and gas exporting countries, the current account surpluses – the difference between the exports and the imports -- of Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Qatar and Kuwait were, in 2005, estimated at about US$ 473 billion. What happens to all that money? Is it used wisely? In the four countries mentioned above, oligarchic elites (without seemingly any real accountability to the people) appear to be engaged what a newspaper report has called ‘pharaonic’, i.e., gigantic and very expensive, projects, such as, in Dubai: an artificial ski resort that can accommodate 1,500 skiers, that opened its doors in 2005; ‘The World’ project made up of 300 small artificial islands emerging from the sea (the Gulf) on which are built luxurious residences, which are sold to extremely rich international buyers, at prices varying between US$ 7 million and US$ 37 million; and the ‘Burj Dubai’, which will be, in 2009, the highest tower in the world. Similar projects worth hundreds of billions of US dollars are in the works in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. [5]

A parallel development in the rich countries – in Switzerland, for example – has been the rapid growth of the luxury goods and services ‘industries’. Expensive jewellery and watches, five-star hotels, fashion boutiques, private banks and business lawyers’ offices that charge huge fees, and so on, are doing extremely well. There is a waiting list for certain makes of ‘complicated’ watches worth US $ 10,000 and more. A recent article in the National Geographic (April 2006), ‘Where Dogs Have Their Day’, begins like this: ‘On any given afternoon in San Francisco’s Marina District, dogs fill the streets and parks, the outdoor cafés and shops. They keep appointments with their masseurs (at US$ 75 an hour) and acupuncturists; they sit for portraits and for readings with their astrologers.’ Banks are making billions of dollars of profits serving the extremely rich, and they have embarked upon a massive expansion program, going ‘where the money is’, opening new branches, in Asia, North and South America and Europe. Offshore banking which serves mainly as a means for tax evasion is growing by leaps and bounds.

Meanwhile, in striking contrast, while some progress has been made to reduce ‘ordinary’ poverty, largely in the ‘emerging’ countries, little or no progress has been made on extreme poverty, and about 1.5 billion people, close to a quarter of the world’s population, continue to scrape a miserable ‘existence’ (if that is the correct word), having to live with the equivalent of less than US$ 1 a day. In addition, two more billion people must make do with less than US$ 2 a day. As a result, as it has been repeated ad nauseam: thousands of children die every day from hunger, malnutrition and preventable diseases; millions of adults are the hapless victims of AIDS and malaria every year, and tuberculosis is making a comeback; and hundreds of millions of largely unemployed people must live in slums, in shacks made of cardboard and without sewers, access to clean water and electricity.

Given all that, it is not surprising that Marxism, whose definitive demise had been, with great fanfare, announced after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1989, appears to be staging a strong come back. A growing number of knowledgeable observers of the social ‘scene’ are acknowledging that Marx’s analysis of what is wrong with capitalism remains valid in the age of the neo-liberal globalisation -- even if the cures that he proposed, based on too an idealistic a view of humanity, have, largely, turned out utopian. Thus, albeit in a modified and so far unconscious forms, ‘class struggle’ is back. Admittedly, the ‘bourgeoisie’ and the ‘proletariat’ are no longer the two dominant social classes in the contemporary world, as they were in the days of the Industrial Revolution, but the exploitation of the ‘working class’, especially in the poor and the ‘emerging’ countries continues. As for the rich countries, the primary (agriculture) and the secondary (industry) sectors of the economy continue to shrink, whereas the tertiary (services) sector – tourism, commerce, insurance, banking, education, health, telecommunications, etc. – is expanding disproportionately. As a result, we have, increasingly, a situation that can, metaphorically, be compared to a person who has a huge head on top of a badly shrivelled body (resembling thus to the alien creature in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. movie).

THE PRIMACY OF REASON

The primacy of reason is the overall concept on which modernity and the Western civilisation are based. It can even be asserted that rationalism has been, and still is, the foundation stone on which sits the whole building of Western civilisation. Reason was behind the ideas and theories of the ‘classical’ and ‘neo-classical’ economists, such as: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Vilfredo Pareto and Joseph Alois Schumpeter. Adam Smith invented the ‘division of labour’ and argued famously – in the Wealth of Nations -- that if individuals are allowed to pursue their selfish interests, society as a whole will benefit; Ricardo is known for his theory of international trade according to which if each country specialises in the economic activities in which it has a ‘comparative advantage’, all countries engaged in international trade will benefit; John Stuart Mill is the champion of ‘liberty’ and ‘utility’ in human affairs; Pareto emphasized the positive role of the elites and first introduced mathematical models; and Schumpeter focused on the crucial role of the entrepreneur engaged in ‘continuous technological innovation’. All these economic thinkers represented, of course, progress in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But the problem is, as social reality has changed in the twentieth, and now the twenty-first centuries, inevitably, new elements have appeared that, at least in part, have turned the advantages of a ‘market’ economy into liabilities -- as can be seen clearly from the consequences of globalisation.

The primacy of reason was the great revolutionary idea of the eighteenth century. So much so, in fact, that the century itself came to be known, deservedly, as the Age of Reason. And all the great economists mentioned above, and their heirs or inheritors -- such as, John Maynard Keynes, who defended the right of governments to intervene in the economy, mainly to fight unemployment by creating jobs; and Thorsteen Bunde Veblen, who wrote about The Theory of the Leisure Class -- relied, of course, also on reason. A parenthesis here to note that Adam Smith, the father of them all, believed in the ‘invisible hand’ (God in other words) regulating economic activity, and that is hardly a rational concept (parenthesis closed). The origin of the primacy of reason goes (at least) back to the Ancient Greeks, but it was in the eighteenth century that it was systematically used as the main weapon against the forces of obscurantism -- represented at that time mainly by the Church and the Royalists who defended the principle of the divine origin of authority and political power. The struggle for liberty and, to a lesser extent, justice, was won thanks to the victory of the ‘enlightened’ people who defended the primacy of reason. The latter, moreover, has been the main engine of the development in science and technology. As a result, the quality of life improved considerably in the Western world, owing to progress in hygiene, medicine, communication, transportation, and so on. The diffusion or dissemination, however, of that progress in the rest of the world has been patchy and extremely unequal. To give but one example, at the beginning of the twenty first century, life expectancy at birth is almost 80 years (the average for men and women) in the rich countries, but only about half than that in some of the poorest countries, such as, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.

THE PRIMACY OF LOVE

The idea of the primacy of love is common to all the great religions and ‘philosophies’ of the world – including the three great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism. But that’s the theory, which mankind has largely been unable to put into practice. That inability has recently been explained by some scholars as related to the ‘need’ of the primitive man to ‘compete’ for ‘scarce resources’. There was, of course, in the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes who, in the Leviathan, argued that man was a creature motivated only by self-interest, and that is why, Hobbes thought, a ‘sovereign’ authority was needed to make him ‘behave’. Be that as it may, it was probably true that, in those dark ages, the ‘survival of the fittest’ was a good way to describe social life. For the scholars mentioned above , during that period of ‘social Darwinism’, humans used the reptilian part of their brains. But, these same scholars insist, man no longer uses his reptilian brain, and he no longer lives in a situation of global scarcity, and in an advanced and ethical civilisation, ‘cooperation and altruism’ are not only possible, but necessary, in order to build sustainable world. [6]

I shall add that in such a wealthy and technologically advanced world the existence of extreme poverty is a violation of a fundamental human right. Therefore, while the primacy of reason should certainly remain valid in the fields of science and technology, and in the related fields of material production, and so on, it should be, in the field of political economy, that is, in the distribution of income and wealth and resources, replaced by the primacy of love. I believe that the very survival of the human species, and indeed of the planet itself may, ultimately, depend on mankind’s ability and, more importantly, its will, to make that quantum leap. If and when the ’political economy of love’ is adopted by the Powers That Be, humanity will be able to usher in a better world based on peace, justice and solidarity.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LOVE

What then would be the main elements, or components, of a world based on the political economy of love? I shall, in the following pages explore briefly the following three relevant subjects that I have studied in relatively more detail in other essays: [7]

I - The abolition of war and the establishment of a culture of peace;

II - A larger role for women in world affairs; and

III - A Global Marshall Plan to eradicate extreme poverty in the world.

THE ABOLITION OF WAR AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A CULTURE OF PEACE

Of course the idea that war is bad, or even evil, and that it should be abolished, is not new. The oldest and best known statement on that subject may well be Prophet Isaiah's famous injunction: 'They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.' Plato wrote in Phaedo that, 'The origin of all wars is the pursuit of wealth, and we pursue wealth because we live in slavery to the cares of the body'. Seneca, in his Epistles, warns us that 'We are mad, not only as individuals, but also as nations. That is so because while we condemn manslaughter and murder, we do nothing to stop war the slaughter of whole peoples.' There have been in the past good reasons to go to war. As St. Augustine observed a long time ago: 'Peace is war's purpose ... (E)very man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by waging peace.' The war against Nazi Germany was such a war. But is that an argument against the abolition of war? Thomas Merton declared that: 'Our task is to work for the total abolition of the war. There can be no question that unless war is abolished, the world will remain constantly in a state of madness and desperation in which, because of the immense destructive power of modern weapons, the danger of catastrophe will be imminent …' For Merton, 'At the root of all war is fear, not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything.' [8]

David Applebaum, the editor of the Parabola (an entire issue of the magazine was devoted to the subject of peace), said that 'To abolish war would require a sea change in the heart of man.' The latter can be achieved only if the spirit of non-violence known in Sanskrit as Ahimsa becomes ingrained in the souls of men. Gandhi has based his action against British colonialism on Ahimsa -- and on Satygraha, the truth. Linus Pauling (the only person to have won two undivided Nobel Prizes, one for chemistry in 1954 and the other for Peace in 1962) and his wife, Ava Helen Pauling, have braved constant harassment and threats by the FBI to persevere in their fight against the scourge of war for two and a half decades after the Second World War. Daisaku Ikeda, the President Soka Gakkai, a buddhist organization devoted to peace, and a friend of Linus Pauling, has received, in 1983, the United Nation's Peace Medal. Among the several distinguished thinkers, scientists and philosophers who have participated, in 2003, in an Oxford University Conference (the contributions to which were published in the Parabola magazine issue mentioned above) were Pir Vilayat Khan, Peter Russell, Ervin Laszlo, Michio Kaku and Andrew Harvey. Pir Vilayat Khan, a Sufi master, said, ‘The universe is evolving towards an even greater destiny and we are the means of this global transformation.’ Peter Russell, the physicist, affirmed that: ‘Today we are in the early stages of a shift in the worldview ... (based on) space, time and matter (which) ... does not allow for the existence of consciousness, which is the fundamental quality of the Cosmos.’ For Professor Ervin Laszlo, the President of the Club of Budapest, ‘We operate in an outdated worldview ... We have to shift ... to trust in our inner sources of consciousness and knowing.’ Michio Kaku said ‘We are privileged to be alive at the birth of the most incredible transition in human history, the birth of a planetary civilization … I have dedicated my life to the prospects of a peaceful world. I believe we will see the day when nations do live in harmony and peace.’ For Andrew Harvey, the mystical thinker, ‘We are going through a dark night of the species as a whole ... The mass media is feeding us trivialities ... The rich world is locking itself into materialism ... We need to become mystic activists ... (T)he world can become the living kingdom of this divine humanity.’ [9]

Nor are words the only means that have been used to denounce the atrocities of war; so have been, eloquently, images. Francisco de Goya -- the creator of the unforgettable painting, Scene of 3rd of May, 1808, and of the series of black ink drawings, Disaster of War, is artistically speaking, the most potent of the opponents to war. One day he was asked by his manservant: 'Why, on earth, Sir, are you always drawing such gruesome pictures?' The Master replied: 'To urge people again and again to stop being barbarians.' Picasso's Guernica, the Vietnam War photos of Robert Capa and the movies, Gone With the Wind and Francis Ford Coppola’s, Apocalypse Now (based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness) have done more to draw people's attention to the terrible consequences of war than a library full of books.

Two individuals stand out as the theoreticians of war: Niccolo Macchiavelli and Karl von Clausewitz. The ‘art’ and craft of war have been strongly influenced by Karl von Clausewitz's magnum opus, On War, published posthumously in 1833. In it, the Prussian general, strategist and military historian makes two major arguments: one, war is an extension of diplomacy or, in other words, politics by other means; if statesmen are unable to secure the national interests of their countries by peaceful means, then they are justified to go to war; and two, once a decision to make war is taken by a government, its aim should be the complete destruction of the enemy’s forces, morale and resources. That second affirmation is why Clausewitz has often been called the ‘prophet of total war', even though he favoured defensive fighting. As for Niccolo Macchiavelli, he -- in his master work, The Prince (published in 1532) -- argued so powerfully that ethics and morality have no place in an 'ideal prince’s’ political calculations to achieve his aims that, in extreme cases, such a behaviour by statesmen is qualified as … machiavellian.

The idea of war as a major instrument of international conflict resolution has been severely shaken by the two terrible wars of the twentieth century, especially the First and the Second World Wars. There were, after those, the Korean and the Vietnam War, in which millions more were killed. But some think that it is the Iraq war that could, in retrospect, prove to have been the violent conflict that turned the tide of world popular opinion against the war. In Europe, large majorities of 70 to 90 per cent of the population have unambiguously expressed their active opposition to the Iraq War – seen, it is true, largely as illegitimate because based on lies. But, to be sure, there is also a new development, and that is massive opposition to war per se. War must be abolished because violence begets violence; and because it has become obsolete, outmoded, or passé in the modern world as an instrument of conflict resolution; war can no longer provide viable solutions to the multiplicity of new problems created in an increasingly complex and interdependent world.

A LARGER ROLE FOR WOMEN IN WORLD AFFAIRS [10]

The idea that women must play a more central, or pivotal, role in world affairs is gaining ground. There are more women in top positions in national governments. Recently, three women were elected president of their countries in Germany, Chile and Liberia. The socialist government of Spain has recently introduced the 40 per cent rule for women to occupy important positions in business and politics. In the United States the possibility that a woman may be elected president in 2008 is no longer considered as utopian. Women have created hundreds of NGOs whose purpose is the building a better world by, inter alia, empowering women. Having said that we must also recognise that women have still a long way to go before they acquire their fair share of power in the world. Presently, of the 185 highest-ranking diplomats at the United Nations, for example, only seven are women.

Probably the very first literary work whose subject is women’s commitment to peace is Lysistrata, a play by Aristophanes. In it, women refuse to grant sexual favours to their men, as long as the latter continue to kill one another by waging war. Admittedly the play is a comedy, but it does illustrate thepower that women have over man to bring about political change. Women have long been active as campaigners against war. Julia Ward Howe, an American has, in 1872 -- seven years after the end of the American Civil War (which remains, with more than half a million dead, the bloodiest conflict in the history of the United States) – proposed a national ‘Mother’s Day for Peace’. It took more than forty years, but, finally, President Woodrow Wilson declared, in 1914, the ‘Mother’s Day for Peace’ a national holiday. 1914 was also the year about thirty women of different nationalities created in Geneva the World Union of Women for International Peace. Three years later, the WUW had 6,530 members in Switzerland, and many more in other European countries.

More recently, in the last decade of the previous century, women have sharply increased their commitment to peace, development and justice. Rigoberta Menchu, the winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, said that ‘Peace is not only absence of war when there are no battles and no fighting. Peace is also to have enough to eat, living in a decent house and respecting one another.’ The fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, in 1995; 189 national delegations attended it. Ten years later, in 2005, participants to the ‘Review of the Beijing Platform Implementation’ urged, with respect to the ‘Millennium Development Goals’, that ‘attention be paid on to how ‘both women and men are being impacted’ by them, and to ‘the critical role of women in achieving all of the goals, and to ways in which targeting women and girls can expedite their achievement.’ Also in 2005, the General Assembly of the European Women’s Lobby has called on the European Commission (the executive branch of the European Union) to create the post of ‘Commissioner for Peace’

A GLOBAL MARSHALL PLAN TO ERADICATE EXTREME POVERTY AND TO PROMOTE DEVELOPMENT IN THE POOR COUNTRIES [11]

The world is ten times richer today than it was a century earlier, despite the quadrupling of its population, which has grown from 1.5 billion to 6.5 billion. So there is no question that the resources to eradicate extreme poverty once and for all exist. So it is difficult not to ascribe that monumental failure to the insensitivity, selfishness and greed of the political and economic leaders of the rich countries. It is more or less certain that, at their present levels, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI, largely by multinational corporations); and multilateral and bilateral aid by rich countries are insufficient to do the job. What is needed is the equivalent of the American ‘European Recovery Program’ that has helped Western Europe to rebuild its economy after the terrible devastation of the Second World War. According to that Program, known as the Marshall Plan -- named after its main architect, the American Secretary of State of the time, George C. Marshall --, the United States, has transferred, between 1947 and 1952, to seventeen European countries a total of almost 13 billion dollars. That is an average of 1,3 per cent of its annual GNP, which translates as more than 130 billion of today’s dollars. In comparison, the total American foreign aid in 2005 was some US$ 15 billion, of which a third goes to Israel and Egypt …). The US made a decisive contribution to the European reconstruction. It often observed – rightly -- that the Marshall Plan was NOT primarily a humanitarian enterprise, and that its true motivation was national interest. With Eastern Europe controlled by Stalin, and the Soviet Union emerging as a dangerous competitor, strengthening Western Europe economically and militarily (thus, also, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, or NATO) was seen as an absolute necessity. So be it. Nonetheless, the Marshall Plan was a great success and Western Europe, not only recovered from the devastation of the Second World War, but it surpassed its pre-Second World War affluence, eventually creating the European Community, and later the European Union, which, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1989, is now expanding to Eastern Europe, to form a strong economic and, hopefully, in due time, a powerful political union.

The eradication of extreme poverty is primarily a humanitarian enterprise, but it is also in the interest of the wealthy countries to get rid of it once and for all because the enormous and growing gap between the rich and the poor individuals and countries is not sustainable in the long run.

At a minimum a Global Marshall Plan to eradicate extreme poverty in the world should include the following elements:

A) The immediate and complete abolition of all the international debt of the poor countries;

B) Multilateral and bilateral aid of 1 per cent of the rich countries GDP;

C) Fair international trade that guarantees a decent minimum income to all peasants and workers in the poor countries; and

D) A massive investment program in agriculture, industry and services – economic and social infrastructure – in the poor countries

E) International control of the Global Marshall Plan that would guarantee good governance in the poor countries

CONCLUSION

I hope I was able to show in this short essay that eradicating extreme poverty in the world is a duty and an obligation, and in the interest, of the rich countries. I believe that to reach that noble goal the primacy of reason must be replaced by the primacy of love in the distribution of resources in the world. Then the ‘political economy of love’ will supersede the ‘political economy of reason’ and humanity will be able to build a better world based on peace, justice and solidarity. It has also been my contention that a Global Marshall Plan is the best means, or instrument, to eradicate extreme poverty in the world by promoting economic development. The humanitarian or ethical dimension is, of course, determinant. Mankind can no longer continue to see a quarter of its total population to suffer from the terrible consequences of extreme poverty, which, I repeat, is a very serious violation of an essential human right. Humanity needs a world that is socially, economically and ecologically BALANCED. The growing gap between the rich and the poor, be it persons or countries, is unsustainable and catastrophic in the long run, and must be done away with.

Dr Zeki Ergas ~ STWR Member

Founder and Executive Secretary of Millennium Solidarity Geneva Group (MSGG), www.millennium-solidarity.net, and the Secretary General of International PEN’s Swiss Romand Center, www.penromand.ch
© Share the World's Resources (STWR)

Notes

1 The inspiration for this essay – especially the concept of the ‘primacy of love’ -- came after a telephone conversation with Mohammed Mesbahi, the founder and chairman of Share the World Resources, www.stwr.net .

2 China, Russia, India and Brazil, four of the biggest ‘emerging’ countries, are sometimes referred to as the CRIB countries: C for China, R for Russia, I for India and B for Brazil

3 ‘Grand’ corruption, as opposed to ‘petty’ corruption, which (like the informal sector) is a means of survival in the poor countries.

4 Les Riches Toujours Plus Riches, in Tribune de Genève, 17 mars 2006

5 Où Vont les milliards du pétrole? Vers des rêves de pharaons, in Tribune de Genève, 22-23 avril 2006

6 Hazel Henderson, ‘Beyond Economism – Policies Guided by “Earth Ethics”’, in Kosmos: An Integral Approach to Global Awakening, Spring/Summer 2006, Vol V, No.2

7 My three essays are: ‘Extreme Wealth, Extreme Poverty: Are the two Related?’; ‘Settling a Historical Debt to Eradicate Extreme Poverty in the World’; and ‘Why Civil Disobedience Campaigns Will Be Necessary to Eradicate Extreme Poverty in the World’; all three published in www.globalmarshallplan.org

8 T. Morton, The Root of War is Fear, an essay first published in 1961. Re-published in the book, Passion for Peace, edited by William H. Shannon (Crossroads Publishing Co., 1995).

9 In Parabola, a quarterly magazine of ‘Myth, Tradition, and the Search for Meaning’. Vol. 27, No 4, Winter 2002.

10 See, ‘UN Commission on the Status of Women CSW 47th Session’, in WWSF (Women’s World Summit Foundation) Global Newsletter, No.2, (Double Edition) July 2003, p.4.

11 The Global Marshall Plan Initiative (GMPI) was launched on October 11, 2003 in Stuttgart, supported, inter alia, by the Club of Rome and the Club of Budapest. www.globalmarshallplan.org . See, F. J. Radermacher, Global Marshall Plan. A planetary Contract (For a Worldwide Eco-Social Market Economy). Global Marshall Plan Foundation, July 2004. By the same author, Balance or Destruction: Eco-social Market Economy as the Key to Global Sustainable Development (Vienna 2004).

Worldwide Activities Brief, Issue #32, April 2006

Peace Boat US is happy to be sending out this newsletter as we begin the merger with Hague Appeal for Peace.

Peace Boat will be docking in New York coming June 5th and 6th! Look out for more information on upcoming events and occasions on our May Newsletter.

Continue to send us your news! (info@peaceboat-us.org) The Peace Education Newsletter will continue every month.

HAP HIGHLIGHTS & PEACE NEWS

l Peru's EDUCA continues to influence national education
l Mine Risk Education saves children's lives
l 100 days update: Argentina parliamentary action
l Stop War, Refugees Are Increasing
l Global Teacher Shortages Threaten Goal of Quality Education for All
l The UNDC Kicking off its Three Year Cycle of Deliberations with an Agreed Agenda

GET INVOLVED

l Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education, Inputs from Civil Society Invited for the Biennial Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly at its 61st Session
l Get Involved with the Network of African Peace Educators (NAPE)

COURSES AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

l Peace Building and Development Institute, Training Course in Human Rights & Conflict Resolution, Summer Program 2006
l Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict: July 23-29

EVENTS

l 18th Annual Information Security Conference & Exhibit, United Nations Headquarters, June 27-28, “Moving Forward At Light Speed: The Latest InfoSec Threats, Alternatives and Solutions”

RESOURCES, MATERIALS, PUBLICATIONS

l Blossoms on the Olive Tree: Israeli and Palestinian Women Working for Peace
l International Law and Small Arms and Light Weapons, Briefing Paper, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue
l Security Council Open Debate on Small Arms

HAP HIGHLIGHTS & PEACE NEWS

Peru's EDUCA continues to influence national education
Peru was one of the four countries in partnership with the Hague Appeal for Peace which intriduced peace education into a community of schools and trained teachers. Betty Evans of EDUCA sends the following report:
There are repercussions after the project was finished. "Peace Education" is being taken seriously now by the Ministry of Education as well as by civil society. We are still being called to share the project and to give feed back to a national planning of PE in the school curriculum. We are asked to share our experience with educators but also with all kinds of grassroots movements. At the present time we are preparing to launch a adaptation of the project in a rural area, Huancavelica, where the violent confrontation took place some time ago but the scars are still open and the people are still suffering and the children are not being helped to go beyond these lasting effects. Two Spanish NGOs, Madre Coraje and Entreculturas are funding this project. The materials for the students will be in Quechua language to encourage its use by the teachers.
EDUCA has been greatly influenced by our participation in this Project and in any strategy or activity we undertake we incorporate the essence of Peace Education in it. Everyone here sends warm regards and the best wishes for peace and hope to you.

Mine Risk Education saves children's lives
Story by project officer Emily Reilly
"Mine Risk Education is very important, especially for those who do not know what landmines are or look like. They may play with them and get killed, as happened to four of my friends." Zaynab Yassen Dewali is an 11-year old pupil at Brayeti primary school in Domeeze, North Iraq. Since 2003, this small town has witnessed eleven casualties as the result of landmines or unexploded ordnance (UXO).
Mine Risk Education (MRE) provides appropriate knowledge for those at risk to live more safely in contaminated areas. It's now part of the curriculum at the school and a number of the teachers have been trained by MAG to educate the children about the dangers from the remnants of conflict, and what safe actions they should take if they discover such an item. Children are taught about the physical appearance of landmines and UXO and given basic safety guidelines and emergency measures, involving how to mark and report dangerous items.
MRE is now a crucial part of the children's education at Brayeti primary school. Zaynab expresses how important it is to her and her classmates: "We enjoy learning MRE because we learn how to protect ourselves. I tell my parents what MRE messages I learned at school. I also tell my cousins, who visit me from Baghdad. I keep away from dangerous areas."
MAG (Mines Advisory Group) is one of the world's leading humanitarian organizations providing conflict-affected countries with a real chance for a better future.
For more information, visit MAG website: http://www.mag.org.uk/news.php?s=2&p=2628
Article from: Good News Agency http://www.goodnewsagency.org

100 days update: Argentina parliamentary action
As part of the 100 days countdown, a bill has been introduced in the Argentina parliament that would commit the government to support the Arms Trade Treaty and international initiatives for small arms control. The bill has been promoted by Espacios and the Parlamento de Jenes por la Paz y la Solidaridad (the youth peace parliament).
For the press coverage visit: http://www.adital.com.br/site/noticia.asp?idioma=ES&cod=22088

Stop War, Refugees Are Increasing
By Kamala Sarup
In 2000 the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution that proclaimed June 20th to be World Refugee Day. Some time ago the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees said the following: "Every day we can observe incredible courage and strength of refugees who have lost everything they had. That is why on World Refugee Day we all should take a break and reflect."
Do we think the world or UN is doing enough to combat refugees problems? Or do we think it is down to the government or individual to be more responsible? Every day, worldwide, there is a tremendous increase in refugees internally and by the wars. Do we think it maybe time now to pressure to refugees problems that is still dominating.
Many refugees are deprived of education and they are not attending schools. In certain developing countries, including in Nepal a lot of refugees children in villages do not attend school or drop out of school to share family responsibilities at an young age? Would the government or UN take special steps to ensure these children get appropriate education?
What we think on the research being done towards developing refugee's living standard? With the patent war on refugees - is the balance skewed too far toward refugees health? With over 90% of refugees women being of child-bearing age, do we think that it may be a good approach to automatically give more power to refugees women of child-bearing age? What is the best solution for the refugees especially like in Nepal? It is said that the refugees women are dependent on prostitution for their living and it is a family tradition. How would we describe the social responses? Do we think there is less of discrimination now than we saw 2 decade ago?
Wars continue to disturb the peaceful life of millions of people in the whole world today, for example the recent conflicts in Africa, Iraq, in the Balkans and in Afghanistan and in Nepal. Even, the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, is trying to draw attention to the challenges it faces in trying to help refugees.
To read more visit:
http://groups.google.com/group/peacejournalism/browse_thread/thread/7e231235c20e857d

Global Teacher Shortages Threaten Goal of Quality Education for All
With a projected worldwide shortage of 18 million teachers over the next decade, most critically in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab States, a United Nations report released today advocates training parents and teaching assistants to fill the gap, along with other innovative solutions.
This is the Darfur of children’s future in terms of literacy, Peter Smith, Assistant Director-General for Education of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), told correspondents at UN Headquarters in New York. We have to invent new solutions or we or as good as righting off this generation, he added. Entitled teachers and Educational Quality: Monitoring Global Needs for 2015, the report, produced by UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics, assesses trends in teacher quantity and quality while exploring the policy implications of bridging the gap between the two, especially in developing countries.
The greatest challenge, the report says, lies in sub-Saharan Africa, which will need to expand its teaching force by 68 per cent by 2015. Countries like Chad will need almost four times as many primary teachers, from 16,000 to 61,000, while Ethiopia must double its staffing to achieve universal primary education.
The Arab States will need to create 450,000 new teaching posts, mainly in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Another 325,000 teachers will be needed in South and West Asia, primarily in Afghanistan, where the teaching force must grow by almost 9 per cent a year over the next decade, according to Institute estimates.
In general, the countries needing the most teachers have the least qualified personnel, with only 45 per cent of teachers having a lower secondary education, which is considered the absolute minimum qualification to teach.
Even North America and Western Europe, though, face a shortage in specialized teachers, particularly in math and science, partly as the result of changing demographic and labour conditions.
The education report is one of the highlights of Education For All Week, observed from 24 to 28 April and intended to remind governments keep their promise to achieve Education for All by 2015, one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed upon by world leaders at the 2000 World Summit.
The theme of this year’s celebrations is Every Child Needs a Teacher.
For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news

The UNDC Kicking off its Three Year Cycle of Deliberations with an Agreed Agenda
The United Nations Disarmament Commission (UNDC) is kicking off its three year cycle of deliberations with an agreed agenda for the first time in two years. Now in the middle of its three week 2006 session the UNDC is discussing:
1. Recommendations for achieving the objective of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons; and
2. Practical confidence-building measures in the field of conventional weapons.
The UN Disarmament Commission is a deliberative body that considers and makes recommendations on various problems in disarmament. Reaching Critical Will is monitoring and reporting on the process, with the only website posting all governmental statements and papers.
The Commission has the most time allocated to multilateral substantive consideration of nuclear disarmament in any of the disarmament fora in years. The Commission can only make recommendations, like the 1999 guidelines for Nuclear Weapon Free Zones, but this opportunity should be seized to find common ground and compromise on nuclear disarmament at a time when international disarmament negotiations (and even deliberations) are at an impasse. New Under-Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs Nobuaki Tanaka told the Commission they had a responsibility to provide fresh momentum by using new and creative thinking instead of allowing posturing to get in the way of results.
The Commission is also considering how to improve the effectiveness of its work. While this may not sound political, some states have used procedures to block substantive work on disarmament in various disarmament fora, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the Conference on Disarmament and the Disarmament Commission. In this environment, procedure IS substance and is absolutely political. Governments are choosing to fight over procedure because it attracts less NGO attention, outrage and action, and makes it more difficult to pinpoint blame.
To read more visit: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/dc/dcindex.html#2006

GET INVOLVED

Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education, Inputs from Civil Society Invited for the Biennial Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly at its 61st Session
The first biennial report on the implementation of the recommendations made in the United Nations Study on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education (A/57/124) was prepared for the General Assembly at its 59th session in 2004 (A/59/178 and Addendum 1 and 2). In 2004, by resolution 59/93, the Assembly a) requested the Secretary-General to prepare a report for the sixty-first session of the GA reviewing the results over the previous two years of the implementation of the recommendations and possible new opportunities for promoting disarmament and non-proliferation education, and b) to utilize electronic means to the fullest extent possible in the dissemination, in as many official languages as feasible, of information related to that report and any other information that the Department for Disarmament Affairs gathers on an ongoing basis. The current report will include disarmament and non-proliferation education initiatives and activities from Member States, United Nations offices and agencies and other international organizations, and non-governmental organizations and academic institutions.* The Department invites reports on its DNP education work.
Send inputs to ddaweb@un.org by 16 June 2006, preferably electronically

Get Involved with the Network of African Peace Educators (NAPE)
The Network of African Peace Educators (NAPE) is open to collaborating with different organizations. NAPE brings together educationists from the Great Lakes and Horn regions of Africa that are currently helping to mainstream Peace Education in the region. This peace education will integrate gender equity, environmental concerns, responsible citizenry, global issues and life skills education into formal, informal and non-formal education at all levels of education. NAPE was founded in 2004 and is based in Nairobi Kenya.
The contact person is Mr. Penuel Nyagaka Moturi, the Executive Director, moturi_nape@yahoo.com

COURSES AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Peace-building and Development Institute, Training Course in Human Rights & Conflict Resolution, Summer Program 2006
Each summer the Peace-building and Development Institute at American University holds a summer training program to train individuals in conflict resolution. The program covers a wide range of issues as they relate to peace and conflict resolution including the promotion of human rights.
Courses offered include:
Week I: June 19-June 23, 2006
Course 1: Religion & Culture in Conflict Resolution with Mohammed Abu-Nimer
Course 2: Bridging Human Rights & Conflict Resolution with Edy Kaufman
Course 3: Positive Approaches to Peace-building & Development with Claudia Liebler & Mark Chupp
Week II: June 26-June 30, 2006
Course 1: Applied Conflict Analysis and Resolution with Ronald Fisher and Brian Mandell
Course 2: Training for Trainers in Peace-building & Development with Mohammed Abu-Nimer
Course 3: Practical Approaches to Peace-building & Development in Conflict Areas with Erin McCandless
Course 4: Islam & the West: Strategies for Peace with Nathan C. Funk and Meena Sharify-Funk
Week III: July 3-8, 2006
Course 1: Arts Approaches to Peace-building & Development with Babu Ayindo
Course 2: Forgiveness & Healing with Eileen Borris
Course 3: Design, Monitoring & Evaluation for Peace-building and Conflict-Sensitive Development with Cheyanne Church
For further questions or to apply, contact 1-202-885-2014 / PCRINST@american.edu
Online Application: http://www.american.edu/sis/peacebuilding
Web: http://www.american.edu/sis/peacebuilding

Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict: July 23-29
The Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict, co-sponsored by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, announces an executive education program. The week-long executive education program will focus on the role of nonviolent, civilian-based strategies in past and contemporary movements for human rights, freedom and justice. It is specifically designed for staff and directors of NGOs and international institutions, journalists, policy advisors and analysts, and others active in international affairs, as well as scholars and academics. The institute will be co-taught by Fletcher School faculty members and outside speakers and will be highly interactive, meant to draw on participants' professional experiences. The course will run from July 23 to 29.
For further details, inquiries and applications, please contact Dr. Stephan at
mstephan@nonviolent-conflict.org

EVENTS

18th Annual Information Security Conference & Exhibit, United Nations Headquarters, June 27-28,
“Moving Forward At Light Speed: The Latest InfoSec Threats, Alternatives and Solutions”
The 18th Annual Information Security Conference & Exhibit will be held at UN headquarters in New York City, this coming June 27-28. Join hundreds of information security, IT infrastructure, business continuity, enterprise security and executive management attendees. Many members of the UN diplomatic community also attend, representing over 100 nations. The InfoSec Conference & Exhibit offers a chance to meet and exchange views with top industry professionals and global decision makers: ambassadors and other diplomats, information ministers, senior business leaders, cabinet-level officials, secretaries of state, even heads of government.
Hosted by, Office for ECOSOC Support & Coordination and theUN Department for Economic and Social Affairs. Sponsors include AIT Global, International Data Group, InfoWorld Media Group, The Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association Founder's, Chapter, and The Rotary Club of New York. Featured Speakers to date include Curtis Sliwa (founder and president, Guardian Angels and 77 WABC Talk Radio personality), Sarbuland Khan (Exec Coordinator, UN ECOSOC Support & Coordination), Ron Layton (Director, US Dept Homeland Security), and more.
For further details and to register, please visit:
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=uisnvubab.0.5x48igbab.sezbjfbab.1504&p=http%3A%F%2Fwww.aitglobal.com%2Ftheform.html

RESOURCES, MATERIALS, PUBLICATIONS

Blossoms on the Olive Tree: Israeli and Palestinian Women Working for Peace
(Janet M. Powers, Westport, CN: Praeger, 2006. Foreword by Betty Reardon; Introduction by Elise Boulding)
Comprising a mix of academic research, oral histories, and accounts of women's lives in various locales, the work emphasizes commonalities and projects shared by Israeli and Palestinian women who as political moderates seek an end to the Israeli occupation. The last chapter calls for bringing women to the peace table as required by UN Resolution 1325.
"It is hearing the stories of real people which brings alive the dryness of statistics and the coldness of official reports. The genius and skill of Janet Powers is to enable us to share in the experiences of women from Israel and Palestine, as they struggle with all the restrictions imposed on them by the political and religious systems within which they live. With clarity and sensitivity she lets these women speak, and the honesty with which their stories are recorded will challenge all of us, and the cliches behind which we often take refuge."
Rev. Clarence Musgrave, St. Andrews Church of Scotland, Jerusalem
The book is out and available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or directly from Greenwood Press website.

International Law and Small Arms and Light Weapons, Briefing Paper, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue
The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue has released a briefing paper on international law, small arms, and light weapons. “International norms governing the transfer and use of small arms and light weapons have evolved quite rapidly in the last decade. Yet the ensuing picture is rather fragmented, with often regional rather than global rules, and insufficient clarity on the application of broad obligations. For instance, how could States obligation to prevent patterns of abuse by private individuals translate into regulation of private ownership and use of firearms? According to which criteria must States assess the appropriateness of an arms transfer, and what level of knowledge would make them complicit in a wrongful deed if weapons were nevertheless misused? What rules should govern arms transfers to non-State armed groups, or arms transfers arranged through brokers? Do these rules cover only small arms, or do they extend also to light weapons and ammunition? How can relevant laws be better enforced? This briefing paper examines the challenges and opportunities surrounding the development of legal standards on private ownership and use of firearms; arms transfers, including to non-state armed groups; and brokering activities. It also calls for a reaffirmation of existing obligations, notably on the appropriate use of weapons by law enforcement officials. As profiled above, these questions have often been addressed at the regional level, providing useful models and lessons learned. However, this reliance on regional arrangements can result in a fragmented patchwork of provisions, susceptible to gaps, inconsistencies and loopholes. These gaps need to be closed at the global level in order to provide protections to all people. A crucial opportunity for action will present itself in June/July 2006, during the First Review Conference (RevCon) of the UN Programme of Action on small arms.”
To read the paper, visit http://m1e.net/c?50094065-aYucM25zhvjqc%401589261-/AIJvx0TzZSSA

Security Council Open Debate on Small Arms
March was a busy month for the Security Council and small arms issues. Under the Presidency of Argentina and following on from the 16th March first ever Arria Formula meeting on small arms issues, there was an open debate on the 20th March. Open Debates of the Security Council include all States, not just the 15 members of the Council. Many of the issues raised by the four NGOs who provided briefings at the Arria Formula meeting, of which the HD Centre was one, were echoed through the day ranging from the need to more effectively include weapons control and DDR in peace agreements and peace operation strategies, to tougher enforcement of arms embargoes, to the need for clearer binding international law to control the arms trade.
The UN press service summary of the full debate can be found at
http://m1e.net/c?50094065-uDohhlZfHqAKw%401589262-bHiWIxBMx.Bis
Presentations from the Arria Formula meeting can be found at
http://m1e.net/c?50094065-mWpvJ3c8jGhaQ%401589263-88M35wBwBBJ5E

Founded in 1999, the Hague Appeal for Peace Global Campaign for Peace Education (GCPE), is an international organized network which promotes peace education among schools, families and communities to transform the culture of violence into a culture of peace. The Hague Appeal for Peace Board of Directors voted to transfer the responsibilities for the coordination of the GCPE to Peace Boat US which has moved into the Hague Appeal for Peace’s office in New York City.
Peace education is a holistic, participatory process that includes teaching for and about human rights, nonviolent responses to conflict, social and economic justice, gender equity, environmental sustainability, disarmament, traditional peace practices and human security. The methodology of peace education encourages reflection, critical thinking, cooperation, and responsible action. It promotes multiculturalism, and is based on values of dignity, equality and respect. Peace education is intended to prepare students for democratic participation in schools and society.

The Global Campaign for Peace Education has two goals:
- To see peace education integrated into all curricula, community and family education worldwide to become a part of life
- To promote the education of all teachers to teach for peace.

The Worldwide Activities Brief e-newsletter highlights how and where the GCPE network is active and growing. Submissions are encouraged! Please contribute how you are working for peace education including dates, locations, a brief description, and a website and/ or contact information and send it to maiko_m@peaceboat.gr.jp. For more information on the Hague Appeal for Peace and Peace Boat, visit www.haguepeace.org / http://www.peaceboat.org/english/. The website for Peace Boat US is currently under construction!

Special Thanks
The Hague Appeal for Peace is grateful to the following for their generous support: The Ford Foundation, Robert and Fran Boehm, The Arsenault Family Foundation, Olof Palme Minnesfond, Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, Compton Foundation, Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust, Samuel Rubin Foundation, The Simons Foundation, Norwottock Foundation, CarEth Foundation, Loretto Community, Rissho Kosei Kai, General Board of Global Ministries, United Methodist Church, Tides Canada Foundation Exchange Fund of Tides Foundation, Wade Greene and several anonymous donors.

Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
May 16, 2006

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) aims to promote constructive perspectives and dialogue about Muslim-Western relations.

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*For an archive of CGNews articles and other information, please visit our website at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).

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ARTICLES IN THIS EDITION:

5. In poetry-loving Yemen, tribal bard takes on Al Qaeda - with his verse by James Brandon
Christian Science Monitor correspondent, James Brandon, writes about a unique technique for countering terrorism that is becoming popular in Yemen: "Other countries fight terrorism with guns and bombs, but in Yemen we use poetry," says Amin al-Mashreqi, one of Yemen’s most popular poets. "Through my poetry I can convince people of the need for peace who would never be convinced by laws or by force." W. Flagg Miller, professor of Anthropology and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin explains this phenomenon, "Yemen has turned to poets because they are able to speak to diverse groups of people whom the literati and the elite cannot reach.”
(Source: Christian Science Monitor, May 12, 2006)

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ARTICLE 1
YOUTH VIEWS
Another Iranian Revolution, but this time in the Arab World?
Talajeh Livani and Bushra Jawabri

Washington, D.C. – In 1979, the world watched in shock as the Iranian Revolution transformed Iran from a pro-Western monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to an “Islamic” republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Iranian revolution had a major impact not only on Iran, but also on Arab countries and the world in general. It revolved around opposition to America and the West, and the promotion of a populist social-theocratic system.

In the years since the revolution, (political) secularism, while suppressed, has become more popular among Iranians, while an increase in extremism has occurred in the Arab world. As a result, the West and Arab moderates are worried about whether we are witnessing the beginnings of an Iran-style revolution in the Arab world or whether we are merely observing an insignificant political fad.

Without a doubt, there is significant and vocal anti-Western and anti-American sentiment in Arab countries due to U.S. foreign policy: support for undemocratic, autocratic regimes, the war in Iraq and the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, and of course the one-sided U.S. policy on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which includes unconditional political, economic and military support for Israel.

The increased popularity of conservative, religious political parties is another reason for concern. Groups such as Hizbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood have clearly been gaining power. They are becoming more and more popular, gaining massive support, and attracting people of all ages. Their popularity is not just linked to religion – what all these groups also have in common is support for economic equality and assistance to the poor. Such movements respond to the legitimate needs and grievances of the disenfranchised and are the only serious opposition to the secular and repressive regimes supported by the West.

Finally, Saddam Hussein’s removal from power has increased fears that Iranian revolutionary thought may spread throughout the Arab world. It is a well-known fact that the Ayatollah Khomeini had attempted to spread his Islamic Revolution to other countries in the region. Iraq acted as a buffer, and the long Iran-Iraq war drained Iran’s resources, leaving it doing little more than supplying token support to terrorist groups. Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s policies, particularly his drive to re-assert Iran’s status as a major power in the Middle East, are seen to resemble that of Khomeini’s.

Despite these similarities, an Iranian-style revolution is unlikely in Arab countries for a number of reasons.

First, Iran’s identity is derived not only from Islam but from Persian ethnicity and history. Farsi is the state language of Iran and the majority believes in Shi’ism, a denomination of Islam that was established as the state religion by the Safavids in Iran. But it remains an open question whether Sunni Arabs, who have long held Persians and Shi’ites in disdain, are even able to identify with political developments in Iran.

Second, resistance to American power and disapproval of American policy may be widespread around the world, but do not always share the same historical origins and degrees of intensity. Iranian anti-Americanism is more aligned with Iranian nationalism and resentment over interference in domestic politics, such as the 1953 coup orchestrated by the United States and United Kingdom. Arab anti-Americanism, on the other hand, is directed mainly at U.S. policy, and is not derived from a sense of pan-Arab nationalism.

Third, Arab youth are, in aggregate, not nearly as radical as Iranian youth during the 1979 revolution. Western culture has penetrated the Arab world and many people, especially the young, wear Western clothes, listen to Western music, eat Western food, and travel to or have relatives in the West. Even the traditional, religious political parties have had to modify their ultra-conservative policies to some extent to attract more people, especially the young. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood has renounced violence, and Hamas has included more women in leadership positions.

In light of all these facts, it becomes evident that the Arab world is witnessing a massive shift in internal politics, but not something on par with an Iranian-type revolution. The Iranian revolution of 1979 advocated a complete rejection of the West and a strict system of religious law. Contemporary, mainstream religious movements in the Arab world are not opposed to having good relations with the West, particularly if the West, and the United States in particular, would stop propping up oppressive regimes and seriously embrace democracy in the Middle East. Many religious parties have a progressive and pragmatic agenda. They have realised that in order to be considered as alternatives to secular and corrupt governments and to gain support both domestically and internationally, they must transform some of the tenets of their ideology to attract support from the educated middle-classes and, especially, “globalised” youth, who make-up a majority of the population in Arab countries.

How powerful will this modernised, less radical and pragmatic “Islamic revolution” in the Arab world be? What are its implications for the region and the world in general? The answers to these questions are yet unclear but the status quo in the Middle East is certainly no longer a given.

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* This article was co-authored by Bushra Mukbil Jawabri, a Palestinian from a refugee camp in the Palestinian Territories, and Talajeh Livani, an Iranian who grew up in Sweden. Both Jawabri and Livani currently work as consultants for the World Bank in Washington, DC. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews-PiH), May 16, 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 2
Women's theology and European unity
Lily Zakiyah Munir

Rome - In Rome, Italy, a conference of European women theologians was recently organised under a thought-provoking title, “Women-theologians: in what kind of Europe”. The basic questions are: what is the role of women theologians in the process of European unification and, what kind of Europe are they aspiring for?

The conference of around 150 participants presented the views of mostly female scholars and academicians on their struggle to liberate women from discriminatory religious doctrines.

“Enlightening and amazing” could well describe their thoughts. They sharply and critically analysed and questioned religious doctrines that discriminate against women.

For example, participants discussed the creation of woman from man's rib, women being labelled as temptresses and the subsequent notion of inherited sin; and the status of women that equates them with slaves, or the issue of women's "double-god" (Allah and "god" the husband).

Another example was expressed by a woman-theologian who is a doctorate holder and for years has been teaching priests-to-be. She said in dismay, "I teach future priests, but I myself will never become a priest."

What is the role of women theologians in European unification? Starting with economic interests (coal and steel), the unification process is leading toward a Europe which is united geographically, politically and economically, but remains respectful of the diverse cultures and life-styles of individuals, families and societies.

It's a Europe where "no one would be excluded because of race, gender, religion, origin, etc.: a Europe which respects human rights and which shows also a social politic” (The Social Charter of the European Union).

The struggle of women-theologians to promote gender equality and justice and women's rights is a significant contribution toward achieving the above vision. They pursue it through transformation from within their religious system.

A discussion of women's liberation theology starts by bringing theology down to earth so that it is built on social realities and rooted in human problems. Theology should involve itself in human suffering, and become a power to enlighten and liberate humans, including women, from all forms of oppression and injustice.

A theology which is rooted in human problems is liberating, empowering, and supports those who are oppressed and discriminated against. It is also open to people of other faiths, willing to listen to and learn from them, and possibly work together on issues of similar concerns. People face similar problems regardless of their faith, and they may need to work together. Women's liberation theology needs to be continually promoted.

The most valuable lesson I gained from the conference is probably a deeper awareness of the wide gap between Islamic teachings and their practice in Muslim societies.

Islamic theology, known as Tawhid (the Oneness of God), teaches that all humans are equal before God, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity or social status. What distinguishes them is the extent to which they are God-fearing.

This teaching is supported by countless verses of the Qur’an which explicitly illustrate equality between women and men and ensure women's basic rights. On human creation, for example, the Qur’an never mentions the man's rib. It says that women and men are created from a single nafs (soul/substance).

Likewise, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from heaven is never blamed on Eve. The Qur’an states clearly that both were tempted by Satan and committed sin; then both repented and both were forgiven by God.

The Qur’an is clear that whoever does good deeds will be rewarded, and whoever commits sin will be punished, be they men or women. There are many more verses referring to equality between women and men, both as abid (creature) and as khalipha (God's representative on earth).

The Qur’an is so beautiful, especially in its mission to improve women's status and to bring them dignity. But what a big difference there is in reality. It is no secret that the status of Muslim women in many parts of the world lags behind other women in many aspects. They are being discriminated against and marginalised, often in the name of religion.

It is time that women's liberation theology be promoted in Islam.

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* Lily Zakiyah Munir is Research Fellow at the Islam and Human Rights Program with Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Jakarta Post, May 5, 2006
Visit the website at www.thejakartapost.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 3
Nuclear Crisis
Sadegh Zibakalam

Tehran - The conflict between Iran and the United States is as old as the Islamic regime itself. But never during the past 27 years has the intensity of hostilities between the two states been so high. Even at the peak of the war with Iraq, and given that Iranians broadly blamed the United States for persuading Iraq to attack Iran, animosity between the two countries was not as high as it is today.

Many Iranians wonder anxiously whether the US will launch a military invasion against their country. Some are convinced that the US is contemplating an air campaign against Iran's nuclear sites. On the eve of the so-called "5+1" (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) gathering in Moscow on April 17-18, the price of gold jumped sharply in Iran. Although the government intervened and the price eventually came down, the price of a standard Iranian gold coin rose two-fold at the peak of the panic.

What has elevated animosity between the two states to an unprecedented level is Iran's nuclear program. The positions of the two adversaries over the issue are clear and leave no room for compromise. Iran believes in its solemn and ineluctable right under international treaties, including the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to develop its "peaceful" nuclear program. Allowing for some minor mistakes and past negligence that are tantamount to no more than misdemeanours, the Iranian authorities insist that all of the country's nuclear activities have conformed to the rules and regulations of the international watch-dog body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They refer to reports compiled by IAEA inspectors who have visited every site in which Iran carried out some sort of nuclear activity as well as military installations not involved in any nuclear activity. None of the reports produced any evidence that Iran was developing atomic weapons.

While not disputing Iran's right to develop its nuclear industry, the US holds that the Islamic regime's past record as well as its present behaviour give rise to serious concern about the ultimate objective of its nuclear program. Iran basically says: "Take my word for it that I have no intention of developing an atomic bomb and I only intend to enrich uranium to a low degree sufficient to produce fuel for my present and future nuclear reactors." The US rejects Iran's word. The European Union has increasingly adopted the American position, while Russia and China have tried to play the role of honest broker. On the whole, Iran has found itself increasingly isolated and is losing the battle for international public opinion to the Western countries.

Apart from deepening hostility with the US, the nuclear issue has confronted Iran with its most serious international crisis since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. In many ways, the nuclear issue has presented Iranian leaders with a far more complex problem than the eight-year war with Iraq. The Iranian leadership was more or less united over the war with Iraq; this is not the case regarding the nuclear issue.

Ostensibly, Iranians have managed to present a unified front behind the country's nuclear program. The left, reformists, pragmatists, conservatives and hardliners have all defended Iran's rights to develop its nuclear potential. Beneath the unified front, however, there are disagreements. The main disagreement is twofold: how to continue the country's nuclear program, and how to address the international community, particularly the US, on its nuclear program.

The more pragmatic Iranian leaders, headed by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, while in principle supporting continuation of the program, believe that Iran must refrain from antagonizing the West, particularly the US, over its nuclear activities. They are more inclined to reach a deal worked out by the three leading EU countries, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, rather than relying on Russian and Chinese support at the Security Council. They believe that the extent of trade and economic ties these two countries have with the US and the EU is critical; confronted with serious pressure from the US, both Russia and China might withdraw their support for Iran and leave the Islamic regime out in the cold. Meanwhile, Iran has to provide both countries with lucrative deals to compensate for their support.

The deal with the EU may not initially offer Iran a great deal. But in the long run, by convincing the Europeans that Iran is serious in not wishing to develop nuclear weapons, we can benefit a great deal more than by relying on Russia and China. Moreover the EU, particularly the UK, has far more leverage over Washington than do Russia and China together.

This was broadly the strategy employed by the previous Iranian negotiating team, headed by Hassan Rouhani, one of Rafsanjani's lieutenants. In trying to reduce American fears regarding Iran's nuclear program, the pragmatists are also inclined to halt uranium enrichment on an industrial scale for up to five years and to carry out enrichment on a laboratory scale under international supervision. In return for an open and limited-scale program, Iran would expect to receive Western know-how for its nuclear program and, more importantly, much-needed Western investment in the country's energy industry. In short, the more moderate Iranian leaders prefer a more conciliatory approach.

In contrast, the hard-liners, headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, advocate a more hawkish approach to the country's nuclear program. Initially, Ahmadinejad's disapproval of the way the Iranian team had been negotiating with the Western powers was implicit, but he soon began criticizing the ex-negotiators very openly. Rouhani and his colleagues initially showed constraint and did not respond to Ahmadinejad's criticisms; eventually however, they lost patience and replied.

They defended their tactics throughout the two years of negotiating with the EU-3, including the two-year voluntary freeze on the country's enrichment program. The moderates further criticized Ahmadinejad's comments about Israel and the Holocaust. One reformist newspaper even went so far as to accuse Ahmadinejad of trying deliberately to provoke the US. Without naming the President, the newspaper wrote that "it appears that some of our leaders are trying to use the country's nuclear issue as a tool to score points against the Great Satan. While every effort ought to be undertaken to alleviate U.S. fears about our nuclear program, some of our leaders are in fact behaving in exactly the opposite direction." Ahmadinejad eventually replaced Rouhani with Ali Larijani.

The future of American-Iranian relations concerning Iran's nuclear program depends in part on the outcome of the quiet struggle that is unfolding between hard-liners and moderates within the Iranian leadership.

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* Sadegh Zibakalam is Associate Professor of political science at Tehran University. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Bitterlemons-international.org, April 27, 2006
Visit the website at bitterlemons-international.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 4
A nation's interests? Google tells all
Anand Giridharadas

Mumbai, India - Google lifted the veil this week on one of its best-kept secrets: which nations search for what.

Who looks up democracy most avidly? Who seeks out Allah or Christ most faithfully? Who types in "drugs" or "sex" most frequently?

No country's secrets are spared.

Pakistanis look up "Danish cartoons" more avidly than anyone, according to Google. They also lead the rankings for "sex" - with their neighbour and nuclear rival, India, seldom far behind.

"In Pakistani society, sex is a taboo," said Fatima Idrees, a project manager at the Pakistani affiliate of the Gallup International polling agency, adding that "curiosity and availability of the Internet may cause such behaviour."

The site introduced Thursday, Google Trends, measures how often particular phrases are searched for from computers in individual countries and cities. It short-lists the places with the highest absolute number of searches for, say, "cat food." Then it picks the top 10 or so based on which places look up "cat food" much more than they do other things - for instance, "dog food."

The Google Trends site is likely to generate a mix of consternation, embarrassment and laughter around the world. While Google emphasizes its efforts to protect individuals' privacy, the new site does nothing to protect the collective privacy of nations, if such a thing exists - the right of the British to conceal that they look up "handcuffs" most often, or the right of China's leaders to hide that Mandarin ranks second only to English as the language used to look up "democracy", or the right of other officials to hide that Arabic-speaking users rarely look up "democracy".

"This is a fascinating project, effortlessly offering a glimpse into regional and cultural habits and differences that is otherwise nearly impossible to reproduce," said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University.

"This sort of feature reminds us that the Internet is global, not one undifferentiated mass," he added. "Such measurement may help us understand the origin and movement of ideas as they sweep regions and the world."

The Google rankings also generate a new kind of interest-level rating for politicians - as for countries, brands or anything else people look up. Now, the most vain (and most regularly-searched) among us can check how many people are looking us up, where they are from - and, most important, whether they search more for us or for our rivals.

In India, suspicions that Sonia Gandhi is the power behind the throne of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appear to be buttressed by search results. As the leader of India's governing Congress Party, Gandhi gets about 50 percent more searches from Indian users than Singh does.

French users, meanwhile, shed light on France's power struggles. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy draws as many searches on his own as his rivals, President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, combined.

For politicians with sagging poll numbers, Google's index might be some consolation: it records how often people look you up, not whether they love you. To bring Machiavelli's famous formulation into the age of Web surfing, it may be better for a prince - or president or prime minister - to be searched than loved, if he cannot be both.

President George W. Bush commands at least seven times as many searches in Russia as its own leader, Vladimir Putin. Among the French, Bush generates about 50 percent more look-ups than Chirac; among Iranians, Bush is searched twice as often as the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Not everything on the site is a surprise. People in Boston and Minneapolis and in Halifax, Nova Scotia, lead the search for "mittens". Dubliners top the list in "Guinness" searches. When it comes to looking up "dowry", surfers in Pakistan and India are clear leaders.

Other findings are quirkier, and at times too difficult to explain.

Even though homosexuality is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom ranks No. 2 for searches for "gay sex," behind the Philippines.

And consider the list of cities that most frequently look up "amour", the French word for love. Paris, allegedly a romantic haven, is absent from the top 10. The top three berths went to Rabat, Algiers and Tunis.

Other findings suggest the stirrings of a trend. Searchers for "Allah" come overwhelmingly from the Muslim world. But, in a sign of shifting social realities, the word is searched from the Dutch-language version of Google more avidly than from the Arabic-language one. Norwegian, French, Danish, Swedish and German sites also featured in the top 10 for "Allah" inquiries.

"Guns" is a word easy to associate with the United States. But the rising incidence of violent kidnappings and murders in Latin America has perhaps driven searchers to the Web for answers. Buenos Aires leads the cities index for "guns" searches, and Argentina as a whole outranks the United States, with Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru also in the top 10.

The Google system can also be queried one country at a time, to determine, for example, how frequently people in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are looking up "democracy". The Bush administration is unlikely to be pleased by Google's reply for each of those countries: "Your terms - democracy - do not have enough search volume to show graphs."

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* Anand Giridharadas is an analyst for the International Herald Tribune based in Mumbai, India. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: International Herald Tribune, May 13, 2006
Visit the website at www.iht.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 5
In poetry-loving Yemen, tribal bard takes on Al Qaeda - with his verse
James Brandon

Sana’a, Yemen - As the dusk call to prayer fades, Amin al-Mashreqi glances at the expectant faces surrounding him and begins to read from his slim, handwritten book of verse that is helping to bring a measure of peace to this mountainous Arab country.

O, you who kidnap our guests,
Your house will refuse you,
These violations are against Islam

Crammed into a mud-brick shop, his audience, some with their hands resting on their gold-trimmed daggers, listen to his verse denouncing violence and Islamic militancy. When he finishes, there is silence. Then the room erupts in applause.

"Other countries fight terrorism with guns and bombs, but in Yemen we use poetry," says Mr. Mashreqi later. "Through my poetry I can convince people of the need for peace who would never be convinced by laws or by force."

For years Yemen has been known as a breeding ground for extremism. It is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden and where Al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in 2000.

But today this country is quietly winning a reputation for using unorthodox tactics to take on Islamic militancy.

"Yemen has turned to poets because they are able to speak to diverse groups of people whom the literati and the elite cannot reach," explains W. Flagg Miller, professor of Anthropology and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin who has studied Yemeni poetry for about 20 years.

For centuries, Yemen's rulers have relied on poets like Mashreqi to take the government's message into remote areas where regular soldiers and officials feared to tread - and where using force could create more, and angrier, enemies.

"There is a long tradition of leaders turning to poets right across the Arab world," explains Dr. Miller. "The prophet Muhammad himself worked with a poet, Hassan ibn Thabit, to spread the word and compose poetry against other poets and tribes who refused to acknowledge Islam."

But the long and rich history of Yemeni polemical poetry, the idea of using tribal poets to fight extremism began with a chance meeting nearly two years ago, explains Faris Sanabani, a friend of Yemen's president and editor of a weekly English-language newspaper The Yemen Observer.

Leading Yemenis in Sana’a had gathered to chew khat, a narcotic shrub, talk politics, and listen to poetry, Mr. Sanabani recalls. Suddenly, one guest turned to Yemen's most popular tribal poet, Mashreqi, and asked him if he could recite any poetry about terrorism, he says.

Mashreqi rose eagerly to the challenge. He stood up, adjusted the broad, curving dagger hanging at his waist and proudly declaimed a handful of verses glorifying suicide bombers.

As the applause faded, the man who had asked him to recite the verses, Sanabani himself, took him aside and quietly invited him to visit his office.

The next day at the office of the Yemen Observer, Sanabani asked Mashreqi to watch a video made after Al Qaeda's 2002 suicide boat-attack on the French oil tanker SS Limburg off the Yemeni coast.

"I showed him footage of the environmental damage caused by the oil spill and of Yemeni fishermen and their families whose livelihood had been destroyed because their fishing grounds were polluted," recalls Sanabani.

Chastened by the images of oil-stained beaches, dead fish, and seabirds and sobbing, destitute Yemeni fishermen, Mashreqi left Sanabani's office appearing troubled and lost in thought. When Sanabani next saw him he seemed a man transformed.

"Three days later he came back with the most beautiful poetry I have ever seen," says Sanabani, recalling his amazement at the poet's new verses that now condemned violence and promoted peace and tolerance.

Sanabani and Mashreqi realized that the historic respect accorded to poets gives them a unique power to win over illiterate tribesmen in remote areas where villagers are traditionally sceptical of all that the government has to say and offer.

"The Yemeni people are very sensitive to poetry - especially traditional poetry like this," says Mashreqi. "If poetry contains the right ideas and is used in the right context, then people will respond to it because this is heart of their culture."

And although Yemen has used force to tackle Al Qaeda cells and rebel groups, Mashreqi's poems also fit into Yemen's wider strategy of defeating Islamic extremism by appealing to their countrymen's sense of pride, honour, and patriotism.

O men of arms, why do you love injustice?
You must live in law and order
Get up, wake up, or be forever regretful,
Don't be infamous among the nations

The poems, however, also robustly argue that carrying out terrorist attacks in Yemen will succeed in scaring away much-needed foreign investment and tourism - an argument that few impoverished Yemenis can dispute.

"You have to talk to people about the dangers and effects of terrorism," says Ahmed al-Kibsi, professor of political science at Sana’a University. "Education, the media, and the military complement each other."

So far Yemen's tactics seem to be helping. Since Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh joined President Bush's War on Terror in late 2001 the country has not experienced any major Islamist attacks - although internal tribal conflicts regularly flare up, as does a long-running Shiite Muslim uprising in the country's far north.

But while there have been few successful attacks by Islamic militants in Yemen, the country has still had its troubles with Al Qaeda.

In February, at least 23 suspected and convicted Al Qaeda members escaped from a jail in Sana’a. The Yemen Observer reported that, "some of the escapees were the most important and dangerous members of Yemen's Al Qaeda network, and have been blamed for bombing the USS Cole warship in Aden."

Also, there may have been other unintended side effects of Yemen's successful campaign to persuade would-be jihadists not to carry out their attacks on Yemeni soil.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many Yemenis have instead travelled to Iraq to fight against the US-led occupation. In the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Yemenis are said to have made up the second largest contingents of Arab volunteers.

Others worry that while Yemen has succeeded in suppressing the visible symptoms of Islamic militancy, the root causes of violent radicalism remain and the Islamic militancy in the country is not defeated but is instead merely dormant.

Rising poverty, a lack of opportunity, and the arrogance and corruption of an increasingly authoritarian ruling class mean that Yemen's victory over terrorism may be only temporary.

"I've become aware of a real anger on the streets," says Robin Madrid, resident director of the National Democratic Institute's program in Yemen, adding that many Yemenis can despairingly point out second and third homes built by government ministers.

"Yemen has the potential to make excellent progress on all the fronts that we're concerned about," says Nabeel Khoury, deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy, Sana’a, citing Yemen's need to tackle corruption and international arms smuggling while also extending democratization and protecting press freedom.

"At the same time, Yemen faces so many serious challenges that if it doesn't make the right decisions it risks deterioration on all these fronts," says Mr. Khoury, "with potential consequences for domestic as well as regional stability."

###
* James Brandon is a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Christian Science Monitor, May 12, 2006
Visit the website at www.csmonitor.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
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DIGNITY INTERNATIONAL: MONTHLY NEWSBULLETIN - May 2006

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

Dignity News

* Get Up - Stand Up – Community Leaders Learning Programme
* Dignity’s Annual Report 2005: Now Available Online
* ESC Rights Learning Programme, Ireland, June 2006

Other News

* URGENT ACTION - Stop Mandala evictions!
* Government of Malawi Must Comply with Right to Food Obligations
* Mexico Alternative Report on ESC and Environmental Rights
* Human Rights Council Election of Mandates – some NGOs reactions
* WB & IMF Spring Meetings - outcomes

Publications

* The Banyan Tree Paradox: Culture and Human Rights Activism
* 3D Publication on Trade and ESC Rights
* FIDH Mission report on NAFTA effects on human rights in Mexico

Announcements

* Learning Program on Budget Analysis and ESC Rights - call for applications
* Equalinrights: Outreach Officer Vacancy
* Fund for Global Human Rights – grants available
* Master in ‘Development and Globalisation amongst Growth and Exclusion’

Forthcoming Events – Highlights

* Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
* ILO General Conference
* Workshop on Human Rights and the Media
* 2006 Stockholm Conference on Environmental Law and Justice

DIGNITY NEWS

*** "Get Up - Stand Up" – Community Leaders Learning Programme.

Hakijammii Trust and Dignity International are organising a new learning programme for Community Leaders: Get Up, Stand Up - Stand Up for Your Human Rights! This programme will take place this month of May, from the 20th to the 27th, in Nairobi, Kenya.

This learning programme aims at increasing the affected communities’ awareness and knowledge about human rights, in particular ESC rights; relating existing struggles of the community (water, sanitation, housing, education, healthcare) to human rights and working with them to strengthen their call for change through use of human rights instruments; equipping the community members with the skills to claim their human rights and people’s based advocacy; engaging with the Community Based Organisations and other NGOs on a longer term campaign for social change.
Contact person: Elijah Odhiambo (hakijamii@wananchi.com)
http://www.dignityinternational.org

*** Dignity’s Annual Report 2005: Now Available Online - Dignity’s Annual Report 2005, with a full description of all our activities undergone in the past year is now available for consultation and/or download at http://www.dignityinternational.org/A/P1/AnnualReport_2005.pdf

Do take a look at all we’ve been doing last year. Any feed-back from you will be very important for us. You can email us at info@dignityinternational.org

*** ESC Rights Learning Programme – Ireland – From 26-30 June, the Irish Human Rights Commission and the Women’s Human Rights Alliance in co-operation with Dignity International will organise a 5 Day Residential Training Programme on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights with a focus on the gender dimension. The overall goal of this programme is to equip participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to actively promote and defend economic, social and cultural rights, particularly in relation to combating women’s poverty and social exclusion. Further information on this programme can be obtained from Mary Ruddy of IHRC at mruddy@ihrc.ie and Noirin Clancy at womenshumanrights@eircom.net.

OTHER NEWS

*** URGENT ACTION - Stop Mandala evictions!

On May 9, police, along with Mumbai Collectorate officials demolished the slum communities of Indira Nagar and Janata Nagar in Mandala, in Mumbai, India. About 500 – 700 police along with 6-7 bulldozers demolished about 5000 houses from both the areas. The houses that were not demolished, were set on fire. People are now at the open, standing, with all the personal belongings they managed to save from the fire or from police deliberate destruction.

The demolition in Mandala is a blatant violation of the human beings basic right to housing. Ironically as it might sound, the houses burnt and/or demolished were situated on land allotted for rehabilitation by the Government.

Today, 11th of May, 5 men and 3 women activists were arrested and beaten up. Many people have been injured - Shamin Banu, for example, has had a miscarriage after women police beating her in her stomach.

We request all of you to immediately fax/call Mr. R. R. Patil, Home Minister of Maharashtra, to immediately stop the brutal demolition and that the guilty be arrested.

Mr. R.R. Patil, Home Minister of Maharashtra - Telephone: 022 - 22022401,22025014; Fax: 022- 22024873; Email: DeputyChiefMinister@maharashtra.gov.in
Fore more info, contact evictionwatch@yuvaindia.org
A copy of the letter sent by Dignity International on 10 May can be viewed at:
http://www.dignityinternational.org/A/P1/Mandala_sampleletter.doc

*** Government of Malawi Must Comply with Right to Food Obligations - An international fact-finding mission composed of civil society organisations representatives from Canada, Ghana, Germany, Malawi and Zambia was concluded with a set of observations and recommendations to the Malawian government. The mission, conducted by the Canadian human rights organisation Rights & Democracy together with FIAN (Food Information and Action Network), was invited to evaluate the state of the right to food in the country by the National Right to Food Taskforce, a Malawian civil society initiative. Mission members met with rural communities in the Kasungu, Salima and Mchinji districts and with representatives of local and central government, donor agencies and civil society in Lilongwe.

Although the Government of Malawi has taken positive steps to respond to the hunger crisis, the mission observed a number of shortcomings with regards to State compliance with its human rights obligations. The response to the hunger emergency was characterised by lack of accountability, a systemic discrimination of the most vulnerable groups, and a failure to take appropriate steps to lift the country out of food aid dependency.

The preliminary recommendations of the fact-finding mission pledge the Government of Malawi to: draft and adopt legislation that entrenches the primacy of human rights in the design of food security and nutrition related policies; implement effective monitoring mechanisms and complaints procedures at all levels but particularly at the district and village levels; to adopt and support long term programming aimed specifically at the implementation of policies for national self-sufficiency in food production.
For additional information, please contact Kofi Yakpo at kofi@fian.org
http://www.fian.org/fian/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=210&Itemid=103

*** Mexico Alternative Report on ESC and Environmental Rights - On May 1st 2006, Areli Sandoval presented, at the UN Committee on ESCR in Geneva, the Mexican Alternative Report on behalf of the Promoting Group of the Alternative Report on Economic, Social, Cultural and Enviromental Rights. 49 Mexican civil and social organisations and networks elaborated the Alternative Report, and several other organisations - including some regional and international – have been endorsing it.

Reports includes a summary of the diagnosis of the Mexican situation of all the rights considered in the Covenant, the analysis of the economic and social policies, the public budget, as well as other relevant issues in this country.

On May 9 and 10 the Mexican Government presented an Official Report to the UN ESCR Committee on the implementation of Human Rights policies in the country. In the report, the Government acknowledges that the results of the implementation of the Covenant are very varied throughout the country.

The alternative report, the Mexican Official report, as well as observations and declarations are available at
http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/cescrs36.htm
Further information at
http://www.socialwatch.org/es/noticias/noticia_131.htm

*** Human Rights Council Election of Mandates – some NGOs reactions

The first election of the members of the newly established Human Rights Council (HRC) was held by the General Assembly on 9 May.

Human rights groups said they were generally pleased with the 47 members elected to the council, which will replace the highly politicised Human Rights Commission, which was discredited in recent years because some countries with terrible rights records used their membership to protect one another from condemnation. "The spoiler governments, the governments that have a history of trying to undermine the protection of human rights through their membership on the old commission are now a significantly reduced minority when it comes to the council," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "That doesn't guarantee that the council will be a success, but it is a step in the right direction."

Yvonne Terlingen, U.N. representative for Amnesty International, said it was "fairly pleased" that the countries elected would provide a good basis for a new "strong and effective human rights body." "Some countries have been elected with weak human rights records, but they also are now committed to uphold the highest human rights standards," she said.
See list of elected mandates at http://www.un.org/ga/60/elect/hrc/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-05-09-rights-council_x.htm

*** WB & IMF Spring Meetings – Outcomes -

Low Down on World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings 2006 - Eurodad highlights some of the major official announcements made at this year’s Bank/Fund Spring Meetings (20-24 April) as well as details of other issues on the agenda of the IFIs and civil society organisations. The briefing covers some of the key issues that were debated at this years Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF, both official and civil society events, including: Debt; Corruption; Conditionality and Governance; and IMF - Budget ceilings and reform.
See http://www.eurodad.org/articles/default.aspx?id=699

Walden Bello: WB/IMF in Crisis, Spring Meeting Wrap-up Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South reports on strategy meetings held last weekend to discuss the future of international campaigning on the World Bank and IMF, coordinated by the 50 Years Is Enough Network and Focus on the Global South, and held at the Institute for Policy Studies. See full article at http://www.50years.org/cms/updates/story/325
Spring Meetings official website
http://www.imf.org/external/spring/2006/index.htm

PUBLICATIONS

*** The Banyan Tree Paradox: Culture and Human Rights Activism – A new publication from International Human Rights Internship programme. The enormous impact of various facets of globalisation on cultures around the world challenges human rights activists to work more effectively with communities concerned about protecting their cultures. Drawing on the experiences and insights of activists in a range of countries, this book seeks to untangle some of the complexities and controversies that surround culture and human rights issues and aims to help human rights activists to work together to better protect the right to culture.
IHRIP webpage http://www.iie.org/Website/WPreview.cfm?CWID=430&WID=171

*** 3D new publication on trade and ESC rights - 3 D has just released its latest publication: a compilation of references to trade and trade-related issues by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 3D considers this as a very valuable tool in assessing to what extent human rights experts have considered that trade-related issues are of human rights concern.
To read the full compilation on-line please visit
http://www.3dthree.org/en/page.php?IDpage=49. If you would like a paper copy of the compilation, please contact 3D’s secretariat by mailing to Maison des Associations, 15 rue des Savoises - 1205 Genève (Tel: +41 22 320 21 21; Fax: +41 22 320 69 48) or by email to info@3dthree.org

*** FIDH Mission report on NAFTA effects on human rights in Mexico - on the 36th session of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) published today a report of a fact-finding mission on the effects on human rights of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The mission, conducted in Mexico between 22 and 31 of August 2005, looked specifically at the effects of NAFTA, ten years after its entering into force, on employment and working conditions in the Northern part of the country, in particular in the maquilas (free zones) and in the informal economy.

On the report, FIDH calls upon Mexican authorities to reform current labour law in order to ensure that workers are protected, and in particular to raise the minimum wage to ensure a basic living wage; to promote an effective and independent mechanism for the protection and enforcement of labour laws and to ensure that trade unions are independent, representative and transparent.
Read the report at http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/Mexique448-ang2006.pdf

ANNOUNCEMENTS

*** Learning Program on Budget Analysis and ESC Rights – A call for applications is now for the 2nd International Learning Program on Budget Analysis and ESC Rights. The Program is organised by Fundar - Centro de Análisis e Investigación, the International Budget Project (IBP), the International Human Rights Internship Program (IHRIP) and Centro de Estudios Legales y socials (CELS). It is aimed at activists involved in development work, social and economic justice movements, human rights organisations and applied budget groups. Program participants will acquire the basic skills needed to read and analyse budgets, assess situations within a rights framework, and relate budgets to economic, social and cultural rights obligations.
Deadline for applications - June 1st 2006 - For more information and to obtain the application form email to info@escr-net.org

*** Equalinrights: Outreach officer vacancy - equalinrights is looking for an Outreach Officer whose primary responsibilities will be to develop relevant communication strategies and policies; to organise events, such as trainings, seminars, World Social Forum sessions and lobbying efforts, with partners; to coordinate any advocacy work undertaken by equalinrights in conjunction with partners; to coordinate the information needs of equalinrights; to produce and/or edit and manage equalinrights publications; to develop and maintain a database of skilled resource persons on human rights-based strategies.
Read the full job description at
http://www.uu.nl/uupublish/homeuu/homeenglish/working/vacancies/25678main.html
For more details, contact Emma Sydenham - equalinrights Coordinator - at sydenham@equalinrights.org
See also www.equalinrights.org

*** Fund for Global Human Rights – grants available – currently the fund is accepting applications from groups based and working on human rights in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Morocco, Tunisia, or Algeria.

The Fund for Global Human Rights works on the belief that securing basic freedoms worldwide requires effective frontline organisations challenging abuse wherever it occurs. Despite their importance, many on-the-ground human rights groups have woefully little access to the financial resources and support that would amplify their voices and increase their impact. The Fund aims to bring new financial support to struggling, often isolated human rights organisations. The Fund’s ultimate goal is to promote a strong, effective human rights community in every country around the world.

In late 2006, grants will also be available for groups based in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Mexico, or Guatemala.
See http://www.globalhumanrights.org/for-grantees/english/for-grantees

*** Master in ‘Development and Globalisation amongst Growth and Exclusion’ – are now open the applications to the IMAS - International Master of Advanced Studies – Development and Globalisation amongst Growing and Exclusión (Desarrollo y Globalización entre Crecimiento y Exclusión), which will be taking pplace from 14 August 2006 to 27 April 2007. The IMAS is organised by the Graduate Institute of Development Studies (IUED) of Geneva, with the colaboration of DESCO from Peru – country where takes place part of the programme. For more information see http://www.desco.org.pe/dfd-diploma.asp and http://www.unige.ch/iued/en/enseignement/imas/

FORTHCOMING EVENTS – HIGHLIGHTS

*** Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues - From May 15 to 26, in New York, will take place the 5th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, under the theme of "The Millennium Development Goals and indigenous peoples: Re-defining the Millennium Development Goals".
For more information see
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/session_fifth.html or contact the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous at indigenouspermanentforum@un.org

*** ILO General Conference - The member States of the International Labour Organisation will meet at the International Labour Conference, which is held every year, from May 28 to June 25, in Geneva, Switzerland. Each member State is represented by a delegation consisting of two government delegates, an employer delegate, a worker delegate, and their respective advisers. (Employer and Worker delegates are nominated in agreement with the most representative national organizations of employers and workers).
See http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/relm/ilc/ilc95/reports.htm
For more information you can contact the Official Relations Branch at RELOFF@ilo.org

*** Workshop on Human Rights and the Media - A two week course, where students stay affiliated with Viva Rio, an NGO based and acting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Viva Rio is most known for their media campaigns and human rights programs in ‘favela’ communities throughout Rio de Janeiro. The dates for the course are July 10 - July 21, 2006. Students will study international human rights standards, the role of international and local NGOs in the Brazilian human rights movement, the everyday practice of human rights at the community level, and as a special focus, the role of media in representing and promoting human rights.
For information about the course and application guidelines, please see http://homepages.nyu.edu/~pl29/brazil/index.html
To request more information, you can also contact Professor Peter Lucas at peterlucas@nyu.edu, writing in the subject line "Human Rights in Brazil”.
For more about Viva Rio visit http://www.vivario.org.br

*** 2006 Stockholm Conference on Environmental Law and Justice - from 6 to 9 September 2006. Considerations of justice are crucial in all cases of environmental law and decision-making – at the national as well as international level. This Conference on Environmental Law and Justice is arranged by Stockholm Environmental Law and Policy Centre. The topics to be addressed range from local to global settings, and include structural and cross-cutting aspects such as gender, trade, corporate responsibility, climate change, globalisation and North-South dimensions
For information about programme, speakers, workshops and registration, visit the Conference website at www.juridicum.su.se/EnvJusticeConf.

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This is a monthly electronic news bulletin of 'Dignity International: All Human Rights for All'. Dignity International does not accredit, validate or substantiate any information posted by members to this news bulletin. The validity and accuracy of any information is the responsibility of the originator.

If you are working in the area of human rights with a special attention to different aspects of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, we would love to hear from you. To contribute, email us at info@dignityinternational.org

AfricAvenir News are kindly sent out by Eric Van Grasdorff:

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Märchen und Menschenrechte

Am Donnerstag, 11. Mai 2006 von 11 bis 18 Uhr laden die Friedrich-Ebert -Stiftung und AfricAvenir International im Rahmen der Reihe “Kultur als Brücke” zu einer Konferenz über die afrikanische Märchenerzählkultur. Ist es mit ihren Mitteln von Bildern, Geschichten, Symbolen und Zeichen möglich, Menschenrechte breiter zu diskutieren?

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AfricAvenir International e.V. ist nicht für die Inhalte externer Webseiten verantwortlich.

Professor Martin Marty writes in Sightings about
Building the Interfaith Youth Movement: Beyond Dialogue to Action

Co-edited by Dr. Eboo Patel and Professor Patrice Brodeur
Preface by Dr. Diana L. Eck; Epilogue by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006
Available for purchase at: http://www.rowman.com

"This book is the first fruits of a revolution, the most important and ultimately consequential revolution of our time: the interfaith revolution. Gone are the days when we could imagine that the religious worlds of our various families of faith do not overlap and intersect. The encounter of people of different faiths is the hallmark of our times."
- Dr. Diana L. Eck

About Building the Interfaith Youth Movement:
Violence committed by religious young people has become a regular feature of daily news reports. What we hear less about are the growing numbers of religious young people from all faith backgrounds who are committed to interfaith understanding and cooperation. This is the first book to describe this important phenomenon. Contributions include concrete descriptions of various interfaith youth projects across the country - from an arts program in the South Bronx to a research program at Harvard University to the Interfaith Youth Core - written by the founders and leaders of those initiatives. Additional chapters articulate the theory and methodology of this important new movement.
Sightings 5/8/06
Where the Youth Are
-- Martin E. Marty

On principle we do not let Sightings act as a bulletin board for upcoming events or as an intentional advertiser. We have to wait for something to happen or to have been said before we can sight it. An implicit covenant with subscribers restrains us from jamming their e-mails with anything that is someone else's business, not theirs or ours. I start so apologetically and explanatorily today because a reference to a forthcoming event sneaks in at the end of the column, and there is no point in suppressing knowledge of it. For now, though, to the issue at hand.

War-making takes its toll of young men and women. Agents of conflict, prejudice, intolerant acts, defaming, defacing, and hatred come in all sizes and ages, not least of all among the cohort of collegiates, young singles, and young marrieds. As for the other side: Among agents of peace-making, reconciliation, positive dealings with others, tolerant acts, and the like -- where are the young? Look out from the platform, as I sometimes do, or at the back of heads when I am in the audience, and the vision will be of mainly silver-haired women and post-haired men in their sixties and up. They ask, where are the young?

Numbers of excuses are given for the absence of the younger generations in interfaith causes. First, you have to care about faith to "do" interfaith, and many don't care. Second, the framing of issues was done some time ago by people who are now old; that framing doesn't match what the young are thinking. Third, the young are busy shaping careers and making personal life decisions. They do not have the time that retirees or still-employed seniors have. Fourth, they do not pay much attention to world affairs, do not read newspapers, are ignorant of news, and watch reality TV, not realistic TV. Fifth, they are cynical, unready to care about positive actions since, they think, it doesn't pay.

One can provide counter evidence for some of these, but enough of the generalizations hold that serious citizens must care about how to change the situation. Here's where this week's sighting comes in. The Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) in late April sponsored community actions in thirty sites worldwide, attracting 4,000 leaders, all young but diverse; "Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Baha'i, Jain, and Sikh," at least, took part. They were involved across the lines of faiths, cultures, and nations in interfaith conversation and cooperative services of many sorts. This was the third annual National Days of Interfaith Youth Service.

I have come to know a founder, if not the founder, of IFYC -- Eboo Patel of Chicago, who, with Patrice Brodeur, corralled a score of writers to treat many aspects of youth service work, and published Building the Interfaith Youth Movement. (See below for more information.) Harvard's Diana Eck, perhaps too hopefully and a bit hyperbolically -- but I hope she's right -- says this book "is the first fruits of a revolution, the most important and ultimately consequential revolution of our time: the interfaith revolution." She and others describe the Core activities and reflect on them. The IFYC leaders are not wishy-washy "we're all the same despite the names of our faiths" sorts, but help young people draw on the great traditions.

Now for the embarrassment: I noted when well into this research and writing that IFYC has an event in Chicago this coming weekend. See the following References for details.

References:
Interfaith Youth Core's website is: http://www.ifyc.org. Cassie Meyer takes care of "Resources and Communications" at cassie@ifyc.org; or contact Erin Williams at erin@ifyc.org. Eboo Patel can be reached at eboo@ifyc.org. The conference to which I refer is the 4th National Conference on Interfaith Youth Work, May 14-16, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. For further details, see: http://www.ifyc.org/nciyw.php. The book edited by Eboo Patel and Patrice Brodeur is called Building the Interfaith Youth Movement: Beyond Dialogue to Action (from Rowman & Littlefield: www.rowmanlittlefield.com).

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Submissions policy
Sightings welcomes submissions of 500 to 750 words in length that seek to illuminate and interpret the forces of faith in a pluralist society. Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays. The editor also encourages new approaches to issues related to religion and public life.

Attribution
Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column, Sightings, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Contact information
Please send all inquiries, comments, and submissions to Jeremy Biles, managing editor of Sightings, at sightings-admin@listhost.uchicago.edu. Subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription at the Sightings subscription page.

Eboo Patel
Executive Director
The Interfaith Youth Core
1111 N. Wells Suite 501
Chicago, IL 60610
P 01 312 573 8941
F 01 312 573 1542
eboo@ifyc.org
www.ifyc.org

The Digital Advance: More than half the world's people have never made a phone call. Will ICTs assure us change?
1 June 1998
Author(s): Cees J. Hamelink

Viewpoint
http://www.unrisd.org/unrisd/website/newsview.nsf/(httpNews)/34329FCA3B21925D80256B7B003DCF2A?OpenDocument

Digital Information-Communication Technologies (ICTs) promise the world a “new civilization”, an “information revolution” or a “knowledge society”. Once ICTs have realized worldwide access for all to information, new social values will evolve, new social relations will develop, the “zero sum society” comes to a definite end. According to the digital utopists, ICTs will create more productivity and improved chances for employment. They will upgrade the quality of work in many occupations and offer myriad opportunities for small-scale, independent and decentralized forms of production. Poor countries that are still in the agricultural age can now leap-frog into a post-industrial society, bypassing all the trouble of the industrial revolution.

The utopists also predict that ICTs will strongly reinforce current processes of democratization in many countries. The increased access to information flows will undermine official censorship and empower movements in civil society. And they disagree with those who worry about scenarios of worldwide cultural homogenization; they see the emergence of new and creative lifestyles, vastly extended opportunities for different cultures to meet and understand each other.

They foresee the creation of new virtual communities 1 that easily cross all the traditional borderlines of age, gender, race and religion. And it is obviously true that ICTs can perform tasks that are indeed essential to democratic and sustainable social development. They can provide low-cost, high speed, worldwide interactive communications among large numbers of people, unprecedented access to information sources, alternative channels for information Provision that counter the commercial news channels, and can support networking, lobbying and mobilizing

Educational facilities can be improved, using ICTs to facilitate Stance learning and on-line library access. Electronic networking has also been used in the improvement of the quality of health services, since ICTs permit remote access to the best diagnostic and healing practices and, in the process, cut costs. Digital technologies for remote sensing can provide early warning to sites vulnerable to seismic disturbances and can identify suitable land for crop cultivation. In addition, computer technology can assist in the development of flexible, decentralize, small-scale industrial production, thus improving the competitive position of local manufacturing and service industries. In a number of countries-Singapore, Brazil, Hong Kong-the introduction of computer-aided manufacturing technologies in small-scale industries has been very successful.

There is also an environmental advantage in such developments. As the World Commission on Environment and Development noted in its report, Our Common Future, decentralization of industry reduces levels of pollution and other negative impacts on the local environment. Another important digital advantage is the relative ease with which new public spaces can be created in cyberspace. Through digital networks, new global communities are being established. Increasingly, organizations in developing countries are integrated into these webs of horizontal, non-hierarchical exchange that have already proved themselves able to counter censorship and disinformation. Members of ecological movements and women’s organisations, human rights activists, senior citizens and many other groups have made impressive use of digital technology.

The growing ICT demand in developing countries finds expression in long waiting-lists for telephone connections, growing use of cellular systems and expanding numbers of Internet users. To meet this demand, consideration of ICTs is increasingly becoming an integral part of national development agendas. In fact, there is currently a phone frenzy in the developing world.

The planned increase in telephone lines within the Third World for the next five years will require some $200 billion in investments. This is expected to be achieved largely through a massive inflow of foreign capital. And to encourage the later, countries are deregulating and opening their markets for equipment manufacturers and service providers.

The realization of the digital advantage that ICTs can offer requires, however, that some serious problems are addressed. Access to the digital advantage requires access to electricity. A serious problem is that in many rural areas energy is unavailable or very limited in supply. In many urban areas, the provision of electricity is highly unreliable. With an expanding use of ICTs, energy requirements will only increase and will require planning and budgeting for electrification and such alternative energy sources as solar power. (Our photograph with this article shows the geothermal power plant at Ahuchapan, El Salvador.)

The extent of telecommunication grids is very limited in most of the developing countries. There are 1 billion telephones in the world and the 48 least developed countries have some 1.5 million of them. Some 15 per cent of the world’s population has access to over 70 per cent of the world’s telephone lines. More than 50 per cent of the world’s people have never made a phone call. The costs of providing adequate telecom infrastructures are considerable and cannot be met by national budgets alone.

Is the international community ready to provide the massive investments needed for the expansion of networks in developing countries? By way of illustration, it would take some $12 billion to get 50 per cent of the Philippine population on the Internet. To increase teledensity from 0.46 lines per 100 inhabitants to 1 per 100 in Sub-Saharan Africa would require an investment of some $8 billion. Investments are also needed for the digital upgrading of most of the analog, copper-wired networks in developing countries.

In response to the challenge of the info-telecom gap, many public and private donor institutions — including the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, the Teledesic Corporation, AT&T, Siemens, Alcatel, and the United States Agency for International Development — have designed initiatives to provide telecom connections to Third World counties. Apart from the question of whether there will be sufficient funding for all these plans, they also raise the critical issue of the appropriateness of the technologies transferred and the capacity of the recipient countries to master them.

Throughout the past decades, the prevailing international policies on transfer of technology have erected formidable obstacles to the reduction of North-South gaps. And there is no indication that the current restrictive business practices, the constraints on the ownership of knowledge, and the rules on intellectual property rights that are adverse to developing country interests are radically changing, nor the relations between the ICT-rich and ICT-poor countries. When energy and telecom infrastructures are in place, there are still the costs of actual usage of ICTs to address. In order to meet these expenses, taxation and subsidization strategies are needed that allow individuals and institutions to access digital networks.

The effective operation of ICTs also requires a whole range of skills and adequate mechanisms for training in these skills. Technical skills are needed for the maintenance of hardware, the modification of software and the manufacture of electronic goods. Managerial skills are essential to the operation of networks, information systems and databases.

And, of course, information skills are crucial to the processing of all the information made available through the ICTs. This needs planning and funding of extensive educational programmes. It also needs to be realised that national efforts to attain the digital benefits are part of a global environment. Scope and direction of national ICT-strategies are strongly influenced by the emerging global system of governance for the information-communication sector. The bottom line of this system proposes that the deployment of ICTs should predominantly, if not totally, be a matter of market relations. Global policy making addresses primarily the removal of all obstacles that might stand in the way of the unhindered operation of the major ICT investors on markets around the world.

A landmark in deregulatory policies is the World Trade Organization’s telecom agreement of early 1997. The agreement requires signatory countries (68 countries that represent 98 per cent of the $600 billion telecom trade) to liberalize their markets to foreign competition. The agreement has seriously compromised the chances for universal network access as national policies may be considered anti-competitive if Governments intervene in the market to guarantee universal service.

In the present system of global governance, the interests of industrial countries and transnational corporations are usually better served than the prospects for developing countries. A more adequate representation of all the parties affected by global governance needs to be attained if ICT advantages are to be equitably shared.

The most immediate challenge for national governments and the international community is the insight that the use of ICTs for sustainable development will not be determined by technological developments, but by political decisions. The realization of the digital advantage requires creative styles of governance that are not merely inspired by visions of digital benefits, but also address the serious obstacles which hinder attaining the digital advantage.

For national governments and the international community, this implies the design of policies that leave the realization of ICT-potential not exclusively to market interests, a substantial allocation of public funding for the costs of accessing and using ICTs, and a massive effort in human resource training for the mastery of ICT-related skills.

It would seem appropriate — in the context of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — to emphasize that the deployment of ICTs should be primarily guided by respect for such universal standards as human security, autonomy and equality. The most perplexing question ICT strategists may face is whether such people-centred ideals can be achieved in a global order that is increasingly directed by market-centred realities.

Dr. Cees Hamelink is Professor of International Communication at the University of Amsterdam. He currently collaborates with the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) on the research programme Information Technologies and Social Development.

MEMORY, NARRATIVE, AND FORGIVENESS:
REFLECTING ON TEN YEARS OF SOUTH AFRICA’S TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION

Conference to be held: Wednesday 22 – Saturday 25 November 2006
University of Cape Town

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) brought the concepts of forgiveness, apology, and reconciliation after mass atrocity to the attention of scholars across the globe and across disciplines. In the ten years since the TRC’s establishment, the work of the TRC has been replicated in more than a dozen post-conflict settings globally. This interdisciplinary conference will include, among others, scholarship in the arts, psychology, literature, and historical fields to reflect on research and practice done on truth commissions and peace building with a special focus on the following themes: trauma, memory, narrative, apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The conference will be opened by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In his 75th year, the conference will celebrate Tutu’s life of commitment to peaceful justice and reconciliation. Papers that seek to address the complex nuances linked to the conference themes are invited.

Abstracts should address the following and other related themes:
• Is the language of apology and forgiveness appropriate in societies that have suffered mass atrocities?
• Do apology and forgiveness have a role to play in ensuring that today’s victims do not become tomorrow’s perpetrators?
• What are the obstacles that might hinder dialogue between children of victims and children of perpetrators, and how might these factors inform our understanding of the nature of trans-generational conflict?
• Do forgiveness and reconciliation have a role in healing of past traumas?
• What is the role of real-life narratives and literary narratives in historical understanding of, and working through trauma?

ABSTRACT GUIDELINES - DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION 31 MAY 2006
• Centre the title in capital letters at the top of the page
• Thereafter state your names & affiliation (upper/lower case)
• Thereafter type the body of the abstract, using single spacing
• If possible, please use Times New Roman, font size 12
• Please leave 2.5cm margins on all sides
• Abstract should be no more than 1 x A4 page long.
• Pse state preference - oral or poster presentation

On a separate page please let us have your full name, title, address, telephone, mobile, fax and email
Please email your abstract as an attached file in MS Word to Janet Sirmongpong (jsirmong@curie.uct.ac.za)

A provisional programme, registration and accommodation booking forms will be sent to you in June 2006.
Convenors: Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela & Chris van der Merwe, Dept Humanities, UCT
Coordinator: Deborah McTeer, Conference Management Centre (deborah@curie.uct.ac.za) Tel +27 21 448 6263

Dear colleagues,

Universities play an important role as promoters of sustainable development – regarding knowledge production as well as the institutional organization of science. Facing the global dimension and the complexity of today’s problems, universities can hardly meet the challenge of social responsibility within given structures. The concept of sustainability provides a foundation for reflection and action. Its potential for innovation should be examined with regard to the university as a whole.

At the University of Lüneburg, Germany, the three-year research and development project “Sustainable University” is dedicated towards the question of how Universities do already and can possibly meet the challenges connected to the new paradigm of sustainable development (cf. http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/sustuni/e_index.htm). Within this project, we currently engage in a reflection on different theories and concepts of sustainability/sustainable development. We have been discussing sophisticated theories and concepts of the German speaking area. However, we would like to systematically include the international discussion in our reflection.

Therefore, we kindly ask you to share your knowledge with us and inform us about sustainability concepts you know and work with (from your country or international concepts). In case you feel there is a lack of sophisticated theories, this information would also be valuable to us. We are especially interested in concepts of sustainability/sustainable development that are theory-based on the one hand and that operationalise sustainability very clearly on the other hand (e.g. through concrete elements/principles, objectives, rules and indicators).

Thank you for your support.
With kind regards,

Prof. Dr. Gerd Michelsen

_________________________________________________________________

Institute for Environmental and Sustainability Communication
UNESCO Chair "Higher Education for Sustainable Development"
Prof. Dr. Gerd Michelsen
Chairholder
Scharnhorsstr. 1, Building 14
D- 21335 Lüneburg
Phone: +49 (0) 4131 677-2920
Fax: +49 (0) 4131 677-2819
unesco@uni-lueneburg.de
http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/infu/chair

Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
May 9, 2006

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ARTICLES IN THIS EDITION:

5. What really makes a chicken “halal”?
The author of Sex, Power and Nation, Julia Suryakusuma, contemplates the intersection of common sense and religious doctrine when her mother receives a gift of smoked chicken whose halal status (whether it has been prepared in accordance with Islamic doctrine on the slaughter of animals) is uncertain. She considers the various sides of the argument and worries that “religious formalism often overrides common sense, empathy, compassion, tolerance, respect for others, truth, integrity, solidarity and, not least, faith in and oneness with God, which is, in the end, the essence of religion.”
(Source: Jakarta Post, May 3, 2006)

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ARTICLE 1
The responsibility of leadership
Claude Salhani

Washington, D.C. - When a revolutionary movement is transformed from a resistance group into a legitimate government thanks to having won the trust of the people through the process of democratic elections, along with that trust comes the far greater responsibility of running the affairs of state. It’s a heavy task that demands bold initiative -- one that can be compared to the rite of passage of a teenager into adulthood.

As a teenager, one is permitted mistakes every now and then. But with adulthood come new responsibilities and challenges. That is the situation Hamas finds itself in today.

As long as the Islamic movement was the opposition, the active resistance, like a teenager it was expected to err. But since it won the majority vote in the last legislative elections, Hamas has suddenly found itself propelled into the world of governance and leadership –a very different world from the one it was born into and became used to -- and expected to behave as such.

Hamas no longer holds the responsibility of managing a few dozen mosques, schools and clinics in Gaza. Today, the Hamas leadership finds itself directly responsible for the lives and the well-being of the entire population of Gaza and the West Bank. It’s a rude awakening.

To complicate matters further, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) find themselves in a deep financial crisis after being chastised by the European Union and the United States for continuing to refuse to recognise Israel’s right to exist, and for continuing to refuse to reject terrorism.

Adding to their financial woes is the withholding of about $50 million Israel levies on behalf of the PA in the form of import duties collected monthly. The result is that the new Hamas-led government is unable to meet the payroll of its 140,000 state employees. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have stepped in to help with offers of several tens of millions of dollars each to bail out Hamas. It has solved the problem for this month. They may well repeat their generous gesture once, twice or ten more times, but this is by no means a long-term solution.

What Hamas needs, what the PA needs, what Israel needs, indeed what the whole region needs, is a long-term solution that will finally pull the Middle East out of this infernal cycle of never-ending violence.

Despite its financial troubles, Hamas is, for the moment, in a position of power, having won the majority vote. This gives the Islamic group a legitimate mandate from the people. As such, Hamas can negotiate from a position of strength, giving it the opportunity of going down in history as the party which revives the dead peace process, and in so doing, being remembered as the party that extricated the Palestinian people from decades of misery and conflict.

Alternatively, Hamas can continue to play the role of the teenager, in which case as soon as the honeymoon period ends – and that will come about far sooner than it expects once hardships brought about by the new financial crunch begins to crystallise -- it will be remembered as the party that dragged the Palestinians deeper into the abyss.

Let Hamas recognise Israel’s right to exist, let it renounce terrorism, let it embrace the peace process. Let it place the ball in Israel’s court. It takes great courage to move toward peace after being stuck in decades of hate. To be able to do so – and succeed – one must be in a position of strength. Hamas finds itself in that position today. That will change once the Palestinian people realise that the political impasse translates as many more years of lean hardship.

These are by no means easy changes for Hamas to make. These difficulties, however, are part of the natural growing process of a revolutionary movement that matures enough to make the lateral move from a guerrilla group to a responsible government.

Yasser Arafat, the long-time leader of the Palestinian resistance, failed to make that transition from revolutionary leader to statesman, and for that, both he and the Palestinian people suffered greatly. Arafat knew how to be a resistance chief. He excelled at it. He lived for it and knew how to manipulate the various factions within the Palestine Liberation Organization to his advantage. Arafat was a master at that game. But when it came to diplomacy, he failed drastically. He should have retired and gone on to become the father of the nation. Instead… well, we know the rest. Hamas should learn from his mistakes.

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* Claude Salhani is International Editor and a political analyst with United Press International in Washington, DC. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), May 9, 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 2
A conference about business, a conversation across cultures
Bill Glucroft

Boston, Massachusetts - What is this nonsense about Arabs and Muslims being incapable of democracy, incapable of modernisation and incapable of conversing with those dubbed “infidels”? At a recent business conference, I witnessed all that Arabs and Muslims are “incapable” of.

During the second weekend in April, I participated in the annual conference of the International Academy of Business Disciplines in San Diego. The IABD is an organisation that since 1989 has brought together businesspeople from around the world to discuss economic issues, emerging technologies and political and social communication. Unlike similar but more competitive forums, IABD prides itself on its collaborative, as opposed to combative, nature.

The president of this year’s conference was Dr. J. Gregory Payne of Emerson College. He invited 15 Emerson students, myself included, to the conference to both take part in and report on the event (www.iabdpress.com). The group worked closely with the founder of IABD, Abbass Alkhafaji, a professor at Slippery Rock University.

Alkhafaji is a man of great warmth and impressive character who carries a remarkable life story. After serving as a conscript in Saddam’s army, Alkhafaji fled Iraq in the 1970s and arrived in America without the luxury of knowing English. Since then he has not only mastered the language but also his field. Today, Alkhafaji is a prominent figure in the world of business management, and is a popular keynote speaker and bestselling author.

Alkhafaji is not unique. In fact, of the approximately 300 people in attendance at the conference, as many as half did not fit the typical white, male profile. Participants included a mix of African-Americans, Indians and Arabs; Hindus, Muslims and Christians; and both men and women.

In other words, here were rooms full of people who could well have been fighting one another. Instead, this intelligent group was conversing, thanks to prior access to education and subsequent economic success. And that – education and economy (or rather, the lack thereof) – is the rub.

Consider for a moment early Muslim history. While “civilised” Europe was busy bludgeoning itself with feudal wars, the Muslim world was at a social and cultural zenith. The arts and education thrived and trade flourished wherever Islam spread.

Certainly, this was not a period of democracy, and Islam played a leading role. But with commerce came cross-cultural conversation. The economy was sound and non-Muslims were treated well. This was especially the case for Jews, whose relationship with Muslims may very well rival the current Judeo-Christian relationship (the Prophet Muhammad designated the followers of Moses and Christ as “protected peoples”).

Unfortunately, from the East came invasion, and then from the West came colonisation, followed by a dubious decolonisation process that resulted in dangerously undiversified, slow-moving economies completely dependent on oil exports for growth in many cases. Over time, this assault replaced agreeable aristocracies with autocracies, and instigated a centuries’ long tumble from a cultural and economic peak, crushing the region’s potential.

Through such a wide historical lens it becomes clear that violent, Arab-Muslim extremism is not in the genes, but in the politics, and politics can change if we make the effort. The IABD conference was a perfect prototype because it allowed for both intra- and inter-cultural communication.

The focus of the conference was neither democracy nor Western-Arab relations: rather, the pragmatic conference-goers were interested in learning from each other how to grow their businesses and navigate the complex world of international commerce and economics. In so doing, the participants were following the same route as those traders and merchants from millennia ago, indirectly acting as agents of change by linking different nations and cultures.

Ultimately, one of the best ways to achieve greater international understanding and inter-cultural dialogue is through global business. After all, many historians cite the emergence of a merchant middle class in Europe, resentful of rule by an untouchable aristocracy, as a primary catalyst for the development of liberal-democratic conceptions of individual rights and government by the people.

Democracy begins small, at non-governmental and apolitical forums like IABD that bring people together to discuss ideas and alternatives, problems and prospects. Contrary to received wisdom, socio-political progress can occur without revolutionary upheaval. It can occur just as well during a quiet conversation over coffee, or during a PowerPoint presentation on accounting standards.

It begins not with a bang, but with a whisper.

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* Bill Glucroft is a student of journalism at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), May 9, 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 3
The lessons of a predominantly Middle Eastern Turkey
Rami G. Khouri

Beirut - Full disclosure from the start: I am a great admirer of Turkey. Of course I am glad that four centuries of Ottoman control over the Arab world ended after World War I, yet I wish that Turks and Arabs had more regular encounters so that the modern Turkish experience could rub off on us and inspire us. I admire not only the history, power and astounding rhythms of Istanbul, which twice ruled pivotal regions of the world in the Byzantine and Ottoman eras. I also admire its ongoing trajectory to modernity.

Turkey can teach several important lessons to two groups of people who seem to be increasingly at odds with one another: nationally distressed and wobbly Arabs, and a United States-led West that views Arab Islamist parties that have triumphed in elections with perplexity and hostility.

I am a Turkey fan because the Arab world's large, predominantly Middle Eastern and Muslim northern neighbour is seriously addressing all those core issues of nationhood, citizenship and modernity that the countries of the Middle East generally avoid. These include important challenges like making a full democratic transformation, deepening Turkey's secular tradition, coming to terms with a pluralistic identity, integrating Islamists into the political system, fostering civilian control over the military, grappling with the status of minorities and historical traumas, strengthening human rights guarantees, promoting a truly productive economy, maintaining a vibrant civil society, steadily reforming a country to become eligible for European Union membership while not losing sight of Turkey's links with the Middle East and Central Asia, and forging a new, more dignified, less servile and mutually beneficial relationship with the U.S. Any country that does all this simultaneously, as Turkey is doing, is impressive in my book.

For those Turks who dispute my description of their country as predominantly Middle Eastern, and who prefer to be called European, I offer as compelling anecdotal evidence just one experience: I was in a taxi in the centre of Istanbul at rush hour when the driver suddenly reversed at high speed, drove backwards against one-way traffic, inside a major roundabout, in order to avoid going through a few congested streets. Not only did the driver act like a Middle Eastern maniac, but all the other drivers seemed to understand and tolerate this behaviour and facilitated his lawless and reckless reverse journey against the oncoming traffic. Pretty spectacular, and distinctly Middle Eastern.

Modern Turkey has always had a core of democratic and secular values since the birth of the modern state after World War I. Yet it has also mirrored the rest of the Middle East in keeping all major national and strategic decisions in the hands of the armed forces. This made every issue a security issue, and allowed military leaders to step in and run the state at their whim. This is changing rapidly.

Turkey's experience since 1997-1998 has been impressive because it revolves around three related dynamics that also challenge the Arabs. The first is development of a deeper, more pluralistic and inclusive, democracy that can accommodate the participation, and even the victory, of Islamist parties. Several Islamist surges in the last decade were voided by the armed forces and ruling elite, but more mature attitudes prevailed finally when the current government was formed in late 2002 by the mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This government has enthusiastically championed reforms to bring Turkey into Europe, and has taken bold steps to resolve the Cyprus problem.

The second change has come in the fields of human rights and minority rights. This has especially affected the status of Turkey's large Kurdish minority and how to deal with the allegations of genocide against the Armenians in 1915-1916, which the world beyond Turkey widely acknowledges occurred. Turkish government and society are haunted by the prospect of Turkey shrinking again if Kurds seek independence or deep autonomy in their south-eastern provinces. But the civilian and military leaders recognise there is no military solution, even as they open up formerly shut doors to public discussion of the Armenian issue.

The third, most important, issue has been the gradual expansion of civilian control over the military, in a political system "whose Constitution was written by and for the military in 1982," according to university professor and columnist Soli Ozel. The Constitution was recently amended in a more liberal and democratic manner, he told me, largely as a result of the terms of the EU accession process, which the public strongly supports. This, it seems, in contrast to what happened in Iraq, is one way to do external intervention in order to bring about Middle Eastern democracy.

The civilianisation and democratisation of Turkish politics are ongoing, gradual processes. They are crucial to allowing Turkey to deal with its substantial challenges in the vast arenas that are identity, history, economy, geography and nationalism - and instructive for the rest of us who watch this process close-up, even from the back seat of a lawless taxi driven by a loveable but modern maniac.
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* Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for the Daily Star. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Daily Star, May 3, 2006
Visit the website at www.dailystar.com.lb
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 4
America needs to pick its fights carefully
James Dobbins

Washington, D.C. - If not handled carefully, the recently renamed "long war" on global terror could turn into an undifferentiated campaign against Muslim insurgencies, wherever they may emerge. This would be a great mistake. Just because Al Qaeda attaches itself to one Muslim cause or another should not necessarily make those insurgents America's enemies.

Some Muslim causes may be just, and deserve American support. Others may involve issues of little or no inherent interest to the United States. America will need to pick its fights carefully if it is not to be drawn into opposing every group that Al Qaeda or its ilk chooses to support.

Most terrorism experts have concluded that since Al Qaeda's expulsion from Afghanistan, it has transformed itself from a localised, centrally directed terrorist conspiracy into a globalised, decentralised terrorist insurgency. The difference here between simple terrorists and insurgents is that the former use violence to register grievances - often in the hope that it can lead to some type of change in the policies of their enemies - while the latter actually seek to overthrow and replace the governments they are attacking.

While not centrally controlled, the constituent elements of this new global insurgency are thought to share a common methodology (terrorism), a common inspiration (jihad or holy war), and a common objective (the unification of all Muslims under the religiously directed governance of a new Caliphate).

Impelled by a refined understanding of the enemy, the Bush administration has committed America to a war of indeterminate length against this global jihadist insurgency. The administration's intent is not to engage American troops in every jihadist-supported contest around the world, but rather, in most cases, to help local governments to suppress such groups with American advice, equipment and intelligence.

But if not conducted carefully, the United States could quickly find itself siding against the Muslim cause in every contest that pits Muslim insurgents against Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish or Communist governments, simply because Al Qaeda has chosen to support the other side.

In conducting this global campaign, therefore, it will be important to make a sharp distinction between the "virtual" insurgency being mounted by Al Qaeda, its subsidiaries, allies and imitators, often via the Internet, and the actual insurgencies being conducted by various Muslim groups around the world, usually for reasons that have nothing to do with the restoration of a Caliphate.

These local rebellions often arise from the desire of ethnically, linguistically or religiously distinct populations to achieve some greater level of cultural autonomy or self-government. Jihadist groups attach themselves like parasites to such movements in an effort to increase their own otherwise very limited appeal, garner new recruits, and destabilise moderate or secular Muslim governments. Only rarely can jihadist elements gain control of such insurgencies.

In several instances, the most effective way for the United States to marginalise jihadist influence has proved to be adopting the insurgent cause. It is a rare revolutionary who will not prefer American to Al Qaeda support if offered the choice.

In Bosnia, the United States supported the Muslim cause despite the fact that jihadist extremists were well established in the Bosnian ranks. In Kosovo, America supported the Muslim cause despite the fact that some Kosovars were employing terrorism to drive out the Serbs. In both cases, American support helped moderate Muslim leaders prevail and marginalise extremist influence.

This was also the approach the United States twice employed in Afghanistan, first by supporting Muslim insurgents against the Soviet Union and then, 12 years later, by supporting many of those same Muslim insurgents against the Taliban.

America's gravest mistake in Afghanistan was not that it supported religiously conservative Muslims, but rather that it cut off that support as soon the Soviet Union was defeated. Had the United States remained engaged through the 1990s, more moderate leadership would probably have prevailed, the Taliban would never have come to power, and Al Qaeda would never have been able to fasten itself to a compliant regime.

Rather than let Al Qaeda dictate America's alignment in any dispute by virtue of its own, Washington needs to evaluate each actual insurgency on its own merits and on its relevance to American interests.

In some cases, governments may not need U.S. support to prevail, in which case it may make sense not to take sides. In some cases governments may be employing abusive forms of repression with which the United States should be not be associated. And in some cases, the insurgents may have the more just cause, in which case the best means to marginalise jihadist influence may be to support that cause, as the United States did in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

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* James Dobbins is director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corporation, a non-profit research organisation. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: International Herald Tribune, May 2, 2006
Visit the website at www.iht.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 5
What really makes a chicken “halal”?
Julia Suryakusuma

Jakarta - When I returned from one of my frequent trips to Australia to visit Tim, my husband, I brought some smoked cheese back for my mother. She liked it very much, so I asked him to bring some more for her when it was his turn to visit me in Indonesia. Tim said he'd also bring his favourite smoked chicken, as he thought my mother would like it too.

A day or two after we had delivered the chicken to her, I called to ask if she liked it. She said she hadn't eaten it yet, as a very religious neighbour had questioned whether the foreign chicken was halal (considered clean to eat according to Muslim faith) or not.

Before I could help myself, I blurted out, "Of course Mamih, Tim eats it, of course it's halal", in a tone that implied how dare she question my husband's Islamic credentials? Tim had been Muslim for years, long before he married me, is deputy director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary Islam at Melbourne University (where he's a professor), and is currently finalising a book on shari'a in Indonesia.

He's pretty laid back about Islamic rituals like praying and fasting, but in terms of knowledge of Islam, I would say he knows as much, if not more than, many Muslims, whose knowledge of their own religion is often little more than bits and pieces they have picked up from friends or family -- and neighbours.

I've always wanted to have better knowledge of my own religion, especially in the context of present day Indonesia, and was extremely pleased when I married someone who studies the subject. It's ironic that I would be learning from a Westerner, but as far as knowledge and truth are concerned, even if it comes from an enemy, we should welcome it...not that my husband is my enemy!

I respect the religious beliefs of mother's neighbour, because they are what make him a good person, but sometimes I think a little flexibility would not be entirely out of place. I conveyed this to my mother. She said, "Well, he's is just trying to safeguard the family purity." I said, "Mamih, our purity is measured more by our thoughts, emotions and feelings than how a chicken died.

Why don't you just say Bismillah-irrahman-irrahim and leave the matter to God?" I left it at that, and didn't push my mum further -- I didn't even say to her, please Mum, have a bit of consideration also for Tim who lugged the (by now) jet-lagged chicken in his suitcase all the way from Melbourne to Jakarta, then from Cinere where we live, to Bekasi, where she lives, not to mention appreciating his effort to please his mother-in-law. I know she would have eaten the well-travelled chicken had her neighbour not questioned how it met its end, but she tends to defer to him on these matters, perhaps because he's a haji (someone who has made the proscribed pilgrimage to Mecca).

Formalistic adherence to Islam, or any religion for that matter, is something that bothers me, disturbs me, vexes me, pains me -- in varying degrees. And yet, this is the norm, in Indonesia, as in most parts of the world. Religious formalism often overrides common sense, empathy, compassion, tolerance, respect for others, truth, integrity, solidarity and, not least, faith in and oneness with God, which is, in the end, the essence of religion.

I was once interviewed on radio by Ulil Abrar-Abdalla, an Islamic scholar who had a fatwa issued against him by the Forum Ulema Umat Islam (Forum of Religious Scholars of the Islamic Community) for writing an article about a renewal of Islamic thought.

Asked about my spiritual beliefs, I answered that I believe a lot in God but not much in religion. Religion is merely a vehicle, but in too many instances, it's the vehicle that's being worshipped.

This is akin to embarking on a journey from, say, Jakarta to Bandung, but just staying in the car, pretending you're in Bandung and arguing about the technicalities of driving, or the features of the car. It means missing the whole point of the journey -- to be closer to God and to develop Godly traits in yourself. Simply put, that's what spirituality is about for me.

Bismillah-irrahman-irrahim, which Muslims utter to seek blessings for any undertaking (eating, travelling, working, etc.) means "in the name of God the Merciful and Compassionate", not "in the name of God, the angry, intolerant, unforgiving one".

In connection with the halal issue and the unforgiven chicken, I decided to consult a close friend of mine who has a degree in comparative religion from the State Islamic University. "Just say bismillah (in the name of God) and surrender the issue of the slaughtering of the animal to Allah", she said, just as I had said to my mum.

I mean, what do you do if you live in a non-Muslim country? Turning vegetarian is one option (which is probably the best option anyway), and the doctrine of necessity says you should eat what's available, rather than starve, but many Muslims would prefer to take the option of driving all the way to the other side of town to get their meat from a halal butcher, as do some Muslims who live in Melbourne, my husband says.

Historically, the practice of halal reflects the Prophet Muhammad's concern for cleanliness, and echoes Jewish kosher practices. In the 7th century, when modern concepts of hygiene were unknown, the strict Islamic rules of cleanliness made obvious sense. The way people live has changed a bit since then, however.

It is true that Islam is a religion that concerns itself with all aspects of life, both mundane and sacred, but it is contextual in many of its precepts and rules, and can also be very open and non-rigid. Even on the issue of religious freedom and belief in God, it is amazingly flexible. A vast array of Qur'anic verses specify that the question of faith and belief is a matter between the individual and God.

Rather than determining a worldly punishment for converting from Islam, many Qur’anic verses assert that all human beings are free to believe or not to believe in God or any particular religion: "Let him who wills believe in it (Islam), and let him who wills, reject it".

So, what happened to the heretical chicken? I don't know -- I was too scared to ask my mother about it. I suppose it just got thrown out, but I'd prefer to think the foul fowl made a quick get-away and took the next plane back to Melbourne, where people didn't care if it was halal or not!

###
* Julia Suryakusuma is the author of Sex, Power and Nation. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Jakarta Post, May 3, 2006
Visit the website at www.thejakartapost.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

**********

The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) provides news, op-eds, features and analysis by local and international experts on a broad range of issues affecting Muslim-Western relations. CGNews-PiH syndicates articles that are balanced and solution-oriented to news outlets worldwide. With support from the Norwegian government and the United States Institute of Peace, this news service is a non-profit initiative of Search for Common Ground, an international NGO working in the field of conflict transformation.

This news service is one outcome of a set of working meetings held in partnership with His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan in June 2003.

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*The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors, not of CGNews-PiH or its affiliates.

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Invitation to the AMARC General Assembly on November 16-17, 2006 in Amman, Jordan during the XThe 9th World Conference of Community Radio Broadcasters

To all members of
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, AMARC

Dear colleagues:

In accordance with the provisions established by AMARC by-laws, as International President and in the name of the International Board, I am pleased to announce that the AMARC General Assembly will be held in Amman, Jordan, on November 16-17, 2006. Attached you will find the proposed agenda for the General Assembly.

The Assembly will provide a unique scenario for AMARC members, allowing them to participate in setting AMARC policy and priorities, to establish the International Action Plan and the Budget for the next period and to elect members of the new International Board. All members are invited to put forward candidates for the International Board in advance so these may prepare and present their program proposals.

The AMARC International Board, the International Secretariat, colleagues of Radio Ammannet and local organizations participating in the organization of AMARC 9 are working enthusiastically to ensure the successful development of the Conference that will bring us together, from November 11 to 17, 2006 to ensure that both the General Assembly and the 9th World Conference of Community Radio Broadcasters will be highly productive, participatory, and a valuable working and learning experience.

For further information and registration please visit our conference website at: www.amarc9.amarc.org.

The International Board cordially invites you to join us with your voices and initiatives including proposals for workshops, papers and presentations.

Warmest regards,

Steve Buckley
President

Download the General Assembly Agenda at: http://documents.amarc.org/getfile?id=914

Download the Convocation letter to AMARC 9 at: http://documents.amarc.org/getfile?id=913

AfricAvenir News are kindly sent out by Eric Van Grasdorff:

Liebe Freunde,

Am Montag, den 08. Mai 2006 um 19.00 Uhr lädt AfricAvenir in das Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte zu einem Dialogforum mit Dr. Ndiaga Gaye. Welche Rolle spielen Märchen in den heutigen Gesellschaften Afrikas und können sie ein Vehikel sein für die angestrebte moralische Renaissance des Kontinents?

Leeboon! Lipoon! „Die Rolle von Märchen in afrikanischen Gesellschaften“
Dialogforum: Vortrag von Dr. Ndiaga Gaye

08.05.2006 | 19 Uhr | Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte
Greifswalder Straße 4, 10405 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg
Eintritt frei

www.AfricAvenir.org
Wollen Sie Fördermitglied von AfricAvenir International e.V. werden?
Kontaktieren Sie Ann Kathrin Helfrich, Fon: 030-80906789, a.helfrich@africavenir.org

Redaktion des Newsletters: Eric Van Grasdorff, e.vangrasdorff@africavenir.org
AfricAvenir International e.V. ist nicht für die Inhalte externer Webseiten verantwortlich.

AfricAvenir News are kindly sent out by Eric Van Grasdorff:

Liebe Freunde,

im Rahmen des Projekts „Afrikanische Märchen erzählen Geschichte(n)“ lädt AfricAvenir am Sonntag, den 07. Mai um 11.00 Uhr ins Stilwerk, zu einer Matinée der Klänge: Märchen aus Dakar treffen auf Musik aus Berlin. Am gleichen Abend laden wir außerdem zur Filmvorführung des Spielfilms "Sia - Der Traum der Python" von Dani Kouyaté in die Werkstatt der Kulturen ein. Mit der filmischen Bearbeitung des Soninké Mythos aus dem 7. Jahrhundert spürt der Regisseur einigen der Ursachen nach, die in Afrika bis heute zu staatlichem Machtmissbrauch, zu Unterdrückung und Diktaturen führen.

Matinée der Klänge: Märchen aus Dakar treffen auf Musik aus Berlin
07. Mai 2006 I 11.00 Uhr
Lesung und Konzert, C.Bechstein Centrum, Stilwerk

Der senegalesische Märchenerzähler Babacar Mbaye Ndaak begegnet dem Berliner Pianisten Jacek Rabinski: Das Prinzip des erzählerischen Erfindens und Fabulierens setzt sich in musikalischen Improvisationen fort.
Eintritt: 12 Euro / 8 Euro

Filmvorführung: Sia – der Traum der Python (OmU)
07. Mai 2006 I 19.30 Uhr
Film, Werkstatt der Kulturen
Eintritt: 5 Euro / 3 Euro

Sagen, Legenden und Mythen sind der erste Kontakt von Kindern mit der Welt und ihren Spielregeln - auch wenn hinter diesen Spielregeln oft mehr als nur gut Gemeintes steckt. Auch Sia ist eine alte Legende, und wird durch Dani Kouyatés Umarbeitung zum politischen Märchen, das sich gut auf vergangene und gegenwärtige Zustände übertragen lässt. Ein Film über die Ursachen, die in Afrika bis heute zu staatlichem Machtmissbrauch, zu Unterdrückung und Diktaturen geführt haben.

Anschließend Diskussion mit Babacar Mbaye Ndaak und dem Politologen Dr. Ndiaga Gaye aus dem Senegal.

www.AfricAvenir.org
Wollen Sie Fördermitglied von AfricAvenir International e.V. werden?
Kontaktieren Sie Ann Kathrin Helfrich, Fon: 030-80906789, a.helfrich@africavenir.org

Redaktion des Newsletters: Eric Van Grasdorff, e.vangrasdorff@africavenir.org
AfricAvenir International e.V. ist nicht für die Inhalte externer Webseiten verantwortlich.

AfricAvenir News are kindly sent out by Eric Van Grasdorff:

Liebe Freunde,

Am Donnerstag, den 04. Mai 2006 um 19.00 Uhr lädt AfricAvenir im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe african reflections in das Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte zum Dialogforum mit Prof. Severino Elias Ngoenha. Das grundlegende Paradigma der afrikanischen Philosophie, so der Philosoph Ngoenha, sei das Streben nach Freiheit, ein Paradigma, das vor allem durch die Begegnung mit der abendländischen Welt seit dem 15. Jahrhundert geprägt sei.

Donnerstag, 04. Mai 2006, 19.00 Uhr
Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte
(Greifswalder Str. 4, Berlin)
Eintritt frei
Der Vortrag ist auf Französisch und wird ins Deutsche übersetzt.

Das grundlegende Paradigma der afrikanischen Philosophie ist das Streben nach Freiheit, ein Paradigma, das vor allem durch die Begegnung mit der abendländischen Welt seit dem 15. Jahrhundert geprägt ist. Während die erste Phase des afrikanischen Strebens nach Freiheit vom Kampf gegen die Sklaverei geprägt war, ging es in der zweiten vor allem um die soziale Integration der ehemaligen Sklaven; in der dritten Phase stand der Kampf um politische Unabhängigkeit im Vordergrund; heute geht es dagegen um das Streben nach ökonomischer und sozialer Entwicklung. Dieses bildet den Rahmen, in dem afrikanische Philosophie entsteht.

In Kooperation mit dem BER (Berliner Entwicklungspolitischer Ratschlag), gefördert aus Mitteln des BMZ und mit freundlicher Unterstützung der Stiftung Umverteilen und der LEZ (Landeszentrale für Entwicklungszusammenarbeit bei der Senatsverwaltung für Wirtschaft, Arbeit und Frauen).

www.AfricAvenir.org
Wollen Sie Fördermitglied von AfricAvenir International e.V. werden?
Kontaktieren Sie Ann Kathrin Helfrich, Fon: 030-80906789, a.helfrich@africavenir.org

Redaktion des Newsletters: Eric Van Grasdorff, e.vangrasdorff@africavenir.org
AfricAvenir International e.V. ist nicht für die Inhalte externer Webseiten verantwortlich.

Educating for Global Peace
spiritual & ethical perspectives on peace & justice

a peace education center & biosophical institute sponsored lecture series
june - december 2006
www.tc.edu/PeaceEd/SpiritEthic

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In an age of unprecedented, ubiquitous and seemingly unending violence, people throughout the world have lost trust in the institutions, leaders, and policies that determine their lives. Some join together in alternative political movements and some engage in violent resistance, such as that which caused and is exploited by the war on terror. Yet the vast majorities are paralyzed in the face of the global crisis of violence, lacking the critical skills, knowledge and the capacities to bring forth alternatives to confront it and engage in a democratic process of change. Given the unprecedented need to address issues of violence, war and peace, human rights and social justice, there are several questions we must ask ourselves:

Will a new world order emerge, and what kind of world order?
What worldview, values, ethic and ethos will comprise it?
How can spirituality be a resource in this change?
How can peace education contribute to this transformation?

Please join us for this timely and provocative lecture series exploring the possible contributions of various spiritual and ethical perspectives on peace and justice in educating toward global peace.

~ free and open to the public ~ RSVP requested ~
Please note that lectures will take place at different venues.
Please contact the Peace Education Center for additional detail and to RSVP.
email: peace-ed@tc.edu / phone: (212) 678-8116

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Thursday, June 1. 7-9pm
ACTING FOR OTHERS:
SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS OF THE WORK OF NOBEL PEACE LAUREATES
ARTHUR ZAJONC
Professor of Physics, Amherst College; Director, Academic Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Location: Teachers College, Columbia University (Room TBA)

Wednesday, July 12. 7-9pm
ISLAMIC VALUES & TRANSFORMATIVE NONVIOLENCE:
ARE THEY COMPATIBLE?
IBRAHIM MALIK ABDIL-MU'ID RAMEY
Coordinator of Peace and Disarmament Program, Fellowship of Reconciliation; Board Member, Temple of Understanding and Muslim Peace Fellowship
Location: Teachers College, Columbia University (Room TBA)

Tuesday, September 12. 7-9pm
ONE WORLD, MANY RELIGIONS: GETTING BEYOND DIALOGUE...
JOYCE DUBENSKY
Director, Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding
Location: Teachers College, Columbia University – OR - Cathedral Church of St. John of the Divine (Room TBA)

Thursday, October 19. 7-9pm
COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS & BEING PEACE: EXPLORING THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPIRITUALITY, JUSTICE, & PEACE
DALE SNAUWAERT
Associate Professor of Educational Theory and Social Foundations of Education; Chair of the Department of Foundations of Education, University of Toledo
Location: Fordham University Lincoln Center Campus (Room TBA)

Saturday, November 4. 1-3pm
EDUCATING FOR PEACE AT THE LEVEL OF OUR DEEP HUMANITY
PATRICIA MISCHE
Lloyd Professor of Peace Studies and World Law, Antioch College; Visiting Professor, School of International Service, American University; Co-founder and current President , Global Education Associates
Location: The Riverside Church

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Co-Sponsors
The Peace Education Center seeks to provide learning opportunities to inform wider public and academic audiences about critical and timely peace related issues. Peace related concerns are the concerns of all members of the human community. The Peace Education Center is pleased to work with several co-sponsors, from various disciplines and vocations, in the planning of this lecture series. Please take the time to introduce yourself to the work of our co-sponsors by clicking the links below.

Barnard Education Program; Biosophical Institute; The Center for the Contemplative Mind in Society; Fellowship of Reconciliation; Fordham University's Graduate School of Education; Global Education Associates; International Center for Tolerance Education; Peace Boat USA; Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding; Teachers College - Forum on the Role of Religion and Spirituality in Education, Office of Diversity and Community, and Office of the Vice President and Dean of the College; Temple of Understanding; The Riverside Church Mission and Social Justice Department

Freedom and Opportunity, not Language, Define American Values
Posted on Fri, May. 05, 2006
By Eddie García

As third- and fourth-generation Mexican-Americans, my two young daughters and I walked side-by-side with a sea of marchers May 1 to demonstrate our support for immigrant rights. I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride to see so many people exercise the most American of values -- free speech.

I was proud of the courage displayed by those who marched, and I relished that we, as a country, have progressed and matured since the days of violence on civil rights demonstrators by Southern authorities with fire hoses and attack dogs.

To be sure, our nation needs to have a thoughtful debate on immigration, especially with respect to undocumented workers. The discussion should include all relevant public policy issues. Unfortunately, the segment of our populace that is fixated on the notion that immigration dilutes American culture and values continues to hamper meaningful discussion. Not only do those beliefs hinder thoughtful debate, they also falsely imply that American values are connected to language and culture.

...

Please read more on http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/14507544.htm

Dear colleagues,

With this letter we sincerely want to invite you to participate in the projected activities of an international network focused on “Higher Education for Sustainable Development”. This project is initiated and coordinated by the Institute of Environmental and Sustainability Communication (INFU) of the University of Lüneburg, Germany. In autumn 2005, this institute was awarded the “UNESCO-Chair Higher Education for Sustainable Development”.

The efforts of the UNESCO-Chair concentrate on the development and establishment of an international research network. The objective of this network is to conjointly explore and analyse innovative methods of learning, teaching and research in a higher education that is aligned with the maxim of sustainable development.

On our website (http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/infu/chair) you will find detailed information about our opening session which took place in Lüneburg in September 2005 as well as about the Chair´s present and future objectives. In the future, this website will serve as a common information and communication platform for all network participants.

One intended project of this network is a cooperative survey about “Innovative approaches in teaching and learning sustainability in different countries” (working title). Within the scope of this project, data are to be collected, analysed and evaluated, a process that will lead to theoretical deductions. It yields a temporary state-of-the-art-assessment, which can be used for very pointed research activities (e.g. comparative studies) and for advancement in theory and practice.

For this purpose, we have developed a database where all institutions dealing with sustainability in Higher Education may register. The database structure allows for a distinct selection of institutional specifications with respect to their curricula so that the participating institutions can be divided into main groups. Furthermore, as all participants will have access to the database, it will both serve as a communication platform and as a shared knowledge resource.

Furthermore, the database is structured in a way that allows an upgrading during the research project. Thus, further characteristics of sustainable Higher Education may be integrated at a later point of time. These characteristics are to be developed in a second step, in cooperation with interested network participants.

You are all cordially invited to collaborate! We would like to ask you to register your sustainability-related study offering with our database, via a questionnaire. It will take you a just short moment of time! You will find the questionnaire at the following link:

http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/infu/chair/networking/institution.php

Please fill out the fields about general information and chose among the given details about the sustainability-related study offerings of your institutions.

We tried to develop the questionnaire as functional and understandable as possible. Anyway, if you have any complementing proposals or complaints about occurring inconveniences, don’t hesitate to contact us! In addition, please inform us about any problems with the database.

If you know about any other academic institution practicing HESD, please forward an e-mail address to our part, so we can invite the person in charge to join the network.

We would be pleased to receive a response of your part!

Thank you very much for your support! We will keep you informed about our chair activities!

Looking forward to working with you,
with my best regards,

Prof. Dr. Gerd Michelsen
_________________________________________________________________
Institute for Environmental and Sustainability Communication
UNESCO Chair "Higher Education for Sustainable Development"
Prof. Dr. Gerd Michelsen
Chairholder
Scharnhorsstr. 1, Building 14
D- 21335 Lüneburg
Phone: +49 (0) 4131 677-2920
Fax: +49 (0) 4131 677-2819
unesco@uni-lueneburg.de
http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/infu/chair

Transnational Families: Emotions and Belonging

Programme

Thursday 11 May
Location: Medical Biology Centre, LT2 (Lisburn Road)

9.30 Coffee
#10.00 Welcome by David Hayton, Head of School
School of History and Anthropology, Queens University Belfast

10.10 – 10.30 Maruška Svašek
School of History and Anthropology, Queens University Belfast

Introduction

10.30 – 11.15 Zlatko Skrbiš
Department of Sociology, University of Queensland, Australia
Transnational Families: Theorizing migration, emotions and belonging

11.15- 12.00 Loretta Baldassar
Department of Anthropology, University of West Australia
The Role of Return Visits in Transnational Caregiving

12.00 – 13.30 Lunch

13.30 – 14.15 Anna Wanwah Lo
Chinese Welfare Association
Chinese migrants in Northern Ireland and Transnational Family Links

14.15 – 15.00 Patrick Fitzgerald
Centre for Migration Studies, Omagh
Exploring ‘emotional triggers’ of Irish emigrant letters: the evidence of the Irish Emigration Database

15.00 – 15.30 Coffee

15.30 – 16.15 Margaret Littler
School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, University of Manchester
Intimacy and Affect in Turkish-German Writing
16.15 – 17.00 Humberto Gatica: poet

19.00 Dinner

Friday 12 May
Location: Room 302 PFC

9.00 – 9.45 Sara Ahmed
Cultural Studies, Goldsmith College
Between Feelings: Migration and mixed-race families

9.45 – 10.30 Louise Ryan, Middlesex University
Navigating the emotional terrain of families 'here' and 'there':
women, migration and motherhood.

10.30 – 11.15 Coffee

11.15– 12.00 Breda Gray
Women’s Studies, University of Limerick
Making and remaking a transnational sense of home

12.00 – 12.45 Brian Lambkin,
Centre for Migration Studies, Omagh
'The Return of Thomas Mellon to County Tyrone in 1882: a case study in
transnational belonging

12.45 – 13.00 Final comments

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch

If you are interested in participating, or have any queries please contact m.svasek@qub.ac.uk

The British Association for Applied Linguistics would like to advertise its seminars for 2006.
Please see http://www.baal.org.uk/seminars_2006.htm for further details.

Vous trouverez une version française au bas de ce message
Usted encontrará una versión en español debajo de este mensaje

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SHS e-news No. 2 – May 2006 –
Call for nominations for the UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education
***************

We thought you might be interested in receiving regular information on the activities of UNESCO’s Sector for Social and Human Sciences (SHS). Here is the second issue of our electronic news bulletin, which will henceforth be sent out monthly.

In May 2006, the UNESCO Sector for Social and Human Sciences is calling for nominations for the UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education. The name of the 15th laureate of the Prize will be announced on 10 December 2006, on the occasion of Human Rights Day.

The Prize, amounting to US$10,000, was created in 1978 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to encourage organizations and individuals that have made an exemplary contribution to the advancement of knowledge on human rights. The prizewinner will also receive a diploma and trophy – a bronze sculpture, created for UNESCO by the Japanese artist Toshimi Ishii, known as “Toshi”.

Member States and Associate Members of UNESCO, intergovernmental organizations and international non-governmental organizations maintaining official relations with UNESCO are invited to submit nominations of an individual or an organization whose activities merit this distinction.

National or international institutions that provide education and training in human rights and are active in building a universal culture of human rights are invited to submit nominations through the National Commissions for UNESCO of the country where those human rights institutions have their headquarters.

Information about the Prize is available, in English and in French, on the website of the UNESCO Sector for Social and Human Sciences at the following address: www.unesco.org/shs/human_rights_prize, from where the relevant nomination form can be downloaded. The form should be sent no later than 21 July 2006 to Mr Vladimir Volodin, Secretary of the UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education, UNESCO, 1, rue Miollis, 75732 Paris Cedex 15, tel. : + 33 1 45 68 38 45 / fax : (33-1) 45 68 57 26 / e-mail : uphre@unesco.org.

In addition, as you may already know, instead of commemorating its 60th anniversary with a single event, UNESCO is celebrating over sixty weeks. From September 2005 through to November 2006, the Organization hopes to provide Permanent Delegations, staff, UNESCO partners and the general public with a year-long opportunity of learning more about the Organization’s programme.

On 15 different occasions the Social and Human Sciences Programme is taking centre stage to celebrate the anniversary of UNESCO, and the month of May 2006 will be an opportunity to discover, or re-discover, the Sector’s Foresight programme.

Next Tuesday, 9 May, at a meeting to be held from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., several personalities will thus have "60 minutes to convince" the public on the purpose of foresight studies. How, in fact, are we to imagine and anticipate our future without first empowering ourselves with the tools and spaces for prediction? And what role can international organizations play in this field? Questions such as these will be explored by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Hélé Béji, writer, essayist and novelist, and Mohammed Arkoun, professor emeritus at the Sorbonne University, at this meeting co-chaired by the directors of the Division of Foresight and Bureau of Public Information of UNESCO, Jérome Bindé and Saturnino Muñoz Gomez.

The same day, from 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m., the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, will open and preside over the debates of the new session of 21st Century Talks, which are among the “flagship” activities of the organization in the field of Foresight. The topic "Might all disappear? Species, languages, cultures, values, etc.", will bring together four speakers of world renown: Jean Baudrillard, Hélé Béji, Norman Myers and Adama Samassekou.

We have pleasure in inviting you to take part in these events which will be held at UNESCO House in Paris (France). Reports of both events will be posted on UNESCO’s website (www.unesco.org) in the section covering the sixtieth anniversary of the Organization. The reports may also be consulted on the SHS website.

Other events planned for the month of May:

4 May: on the day following the 3rd meeting of the management committee of the European Coalition of Cities against Racism (ECCAR), to take place in the Swedish capital on 3 May, a workshop on "the fight against discriminations and the support for the equal rights" will be held within the framework of the European Conference "Urban Future 2.0." The workshop is co-organized by the city of Stockholm, the Swedish Ministry of Justice and the European Union.

16 May: round-table discussion on the topic of "culture and equality in the European Union", with the participation of Professor Sayla Benhabib of Yale University, and Valentine Moghadam, the head of the Gender Equality Section of UNESCO’s Social and Human Sciences Sector. Room XIII, Bonvin building, UNESCO, Paris (France).

17 and 19 May: Expert meeting on Gender, organized by the UNESCO Office in Bujumbura, providing an opportunity to discuss the feasibility and the mechanisms for setting up a Programme of Higher Education on Gender and Women’s issues in Burundi.

19 May: the book Beijing and Beijing will be presented at the workshop organized by the UNESCO Office in Beijing (China) on the sustainable social development of the historical districts of the Chinese city.

24 May: the inauguration of a new UNESCO Chair in Bioethics at the National University of Brasilia (Brazil) will mark the start of a series of meetings in summer 2006, planned in several countries of Latin America to promote the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in October 2005.

25 and 26 May: with the aim of launching a Coalition of African Cities against Racism in September 2006, a regional meeting will bring together experts in Durban (South Africa) in order to develop a ten-point plan of action. This ten-point plan of action will serve as a common platform of commitments for this new Coalition.

Agenda of UNESCO’s Social and Human Sciences Sector:

UNESCO Social and Human Sciences Sector website: www.unesco.org/shs/

SHS Newsletter website: www.unesco.org/shs/newsletter

----- To subsribe to “SHS e-news” -----

sympa@lists.unesco.org

----- Contacts -----

John Crowley, Chief of Section, SHS/EO/CIP: j.crowley@unesco.org
Cathy Bruno-Capvert, Editor, SHS Newsletter: c.bruno-capvert@unesco.org
Irakli Khodeli, Press Assistant: i.khodeli@unesco.org
Petra van Vucht Tijssen, Webmaster: p.van-vucht-tijssen@unesco.org

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SHS­ e-infos n°2 – mai 2006 –
Appel à candidatures pour le Prix UNESCO de l’éducation aux droits de l’homme
*************

Nous avons pensé qu'il vous intéresserait d'être régulièrement tenus informés des activités du Secteur des sciences sociales et humaines de l’UNESCO (SHS), c'est pourquoi nous nous permettons de vous adresser le 2ème numéro de ce bulletin d'information électronique qui paraîtra désormais chaque mois.

Si vous ne souhaitez plus recevoir ces informations, il vous suffit de cliquer sur le lien suivant : mailto:sympa@lists.unesco.org?subject=unsub%20news-shs.

En ce mois de mai 2006, le Secteur des sciences sociales et humaines de l’UNESCO lance un appel à candidatures pour le Prix UNESCO de l’éducation aux droits de l’homme, qui sera décerné, pour la quinzième fois, le 10 décembre prochain, à l’occasion de la Journée internationale des droits de l’homme.

Doté de 10.000 dollars des Etats-Unis, ce prix, créé en 1978 pour marquer le 30e anniversaire de la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme, récompense des institutions, des organisations ou des personnes ayant contribué de manière significative à une meilleure reconnaissance des droits de l’homme. Le lauréat du prix 2006 recevra également un diplôme et un trophée – une sculpture en bronze, créée pour l’UNESCO par l’artiste japonaise Toshimi Ishii, connue sous le nom artistique de « Toshi ».

Les Etats membres et les Membres associés de l’UNESCO, les organisations intergouvernementales ainsi que toutes les ONG entretenant des relations officielles avec l’UNESCO sont invités à présenter directement des candidatures de personnalités ou d’organisations dont les activités méritent d’être distinguées par ce prix.

Les institutions nationales et internationales qui contribuent au développement de l’éducation aux droits de l’homme et à l’instauration d’une culture universelle des droits de l’homme peuvent également concourir par l’intermédiaire des Commissions nationales pour l’UNESCO des pays où ces institutions ont leur siège.

Toutes les informations sur ce prix sont disponibles, en anglais et en français, sur le site web du Secteur des sciences sociales et humaines (www.unesco.org/shs/ ), où il est possible de télécharger le formulaire de candidature afin de le retourner avant le 21 juillet 2006 au plus tard à M. Vladimir Volodine, Secrétaire du prix UNESCO de l’éducation aux droits de l’homme, UNESCO, 1, rue Miollis, 75732 Paris cedex 15, tél. : + 33 1 45 68 38 45 / fax : (33-1) 45 68 57 26 / e-mail : uphre@unesco.org.

Par ailleurs, comme vous le savez peut-être déjà, plutôt que de souffler ses 60 bougies à l’occasion d’un événement unique, l’UNESCO a choisi de célébrer ses 60 ans d’existence pendant 60 semaines. Depuis le mois de septembre 2005 et jusqu’au mois de novembre prochain, l’occasion est ainsi offerte aux Etats membres, aux personnels et aux partenaires de l’Organisation ainsi qu’au grand public de mieux connaître les actions qu’elle met en œuvre.

Parmi les 15 fois où le programme des sciences sociales et humaines sera mis à l’honneur dans le cadre de l’anniversaire de l’UNESCO, ce mois de mai 2006 sera l’occasion de découvrir, ou de re-découvrir, l’action conduite par le Secteur chargé de mettre en œuvre ce programme (SHS) dans le domaine de la Prospective.

Mardi 9 mai prochain, lors d’une réunion qui se tiendra de 14 à 15h , plusieurs personnalités de haut niveau auront ainsi « 60 minutes pour convaincre » de l’utilité des études prospectives… Comment, en effet, imaginer contribuer à préparer l’avenir sans se doter d’outils et d’espaces d’anticipation ? Et quel rôle peuvent jouer les organisations internationales dans ce domaine ? Telles sont les questions qui seront abordées par M.Boutros Boutros-Ghali, ancien secrétaire général des Nations unies, Mme Hélé Béji, écrivain, essayiste et romancière, et M. Mohammed Arkoun, professeur émérite à la Sorbonne, lors de cette réunion présidée par les directeurs de la Division de la Prospective et Bureau de l’information des publics de l’UNESCO, Jérôme Bindé, et Saturnino Munoz Gomez.

Le même jour, de 18h30 à 20h30, le Directeur général de l’UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, ouvrira et présidera les débats d’une nouvelle séance des Entretiens du XXIe siècle, qui comptent parmi les activités « phares » de l’Organisation dans le domaine de la Prospective. Sur le thème « Tout peut-il disparaître? Espèces, langues, cultures, valeurs… », quatre personnalités de renommée internationale interviendront :M. Jean Baudrillard, Mme Hélé Béji, M. Norman Myers et M. Adama Samassekou.

C’est avec plaisir que nous vous invitons à participer à ces deux événements qui se tiendront tous deux à la Maison de l’UNESCO à Paris (France) et dont vous pourrez consultez les comptes-rendus, par la suite, sur le site web de l’UNESCO (www.unesco.org) en vous rendant sur les pages consacrées au soixantième anniversaire de l’Organisation ou directement sur celles du Secteur des sciences sociales et humaines.

Les autres événements de ce mois de mai :

Le 4 mai : au lendemain de la 3ème réunion du Comité directeur de la Coalition européenne des villes contre le racisme (ECCAR), qui s’est tenue le 3 mai, dans la capitale suédoise, un atelier sur « la lutte contre les discriminations et le soutien à l’égalité des droits » se déroulera dans le cadre la Conférence européenne « Urban Future 2.0 », co-organisée par la ville de Stockholm, le ministère de la Justice suédois et l’Union européenne sur le thème de « la gouvernance urbaine ».

Le 16 mai : table-ronde sur le thème de « Culture et égalité dans l’Union Européenne », avec la participation du Professeur Sayla Benhabib de l’université de Yale, et de Valentine Moghadam, chef de la section égalité des genres du Secteur des sciences sociales et humaines de l’UNESCO. Salle XIII, bâtiment Bonvin, UNESCO, paris (France).

· Du 17 au 19 mai : une réunion d’experts sur les Genres, organisée par le bureau de l’UNESCO à Bujumbura, sera l’occasion de discuter la faisabilité et les mécanismes de mise en œuvre d’un Programme d’Etudes Supérieures sur les Femmes et le Genre au Burundi.

Le 19 mai : le livre Beijing et Beijing sera présenté à l’occasion d’un atelier organisé par le bureau de l’UNESCO à Beijing (Chine) sur le développement social durable des quartiers historiques de la cité chinoise.

Le 24 mai : l’inauguration d’une nouvelle Chaire UNESCO de bioéthique à l’Université nationale de Brasilia (Brésil) marquera le point de départ d’une série de réunions organisée, durant l’été 2006, dans plusieurs pays d’Amérique latine pour promouvoir la Déclaration universelle sur la bioéthique et les droits de l’homme adoptée par la Conférence générale de l’UNESCO, en octobre 2005.

Les 25 et 26 mai : Dans la perspective du lancement, en septembre 2006, d’une Coalition des villes africaines contre le racisme, une réunion régionale réunira des experts à Durban (Afrique du Sud) afin de contribuer à l’élaboration du plan d’action en 10 points qui constituera la plateforme commune d’engagements de cette nouvelle Coalition.

Agenda du Secteur des sciences sociales et humaines de l’UNESCO :

Site web du Secteur des sciences sociales et humaines de l’UNESCO : www.unesco.org/shs/

Site web de la SHS-Newsletter : www.unesco.org/shs/newsletter

----- Pour s’abonner à "SHS e-infos" -----

sympa@lists.unesco.org

----- Contacts -----

John Crowley, chef SHS/EO/CIP: j.crowley@unesco.org
Cathy Bruno-Capvert, rédactrice en chef, SHS Newsletter: c.bruno-capvert@unesco.org
Irakli Khodeli, assistant presse: i.khodeli@unesco.org
Petra van Vucht Tijssen, webmaster: p.van-vucht-tijssen@unesco.org

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SHS­ e-noticias n°2 – Mayo de 2006 –
Convocatoria de candidaturas para el Premio UNESCO de Educación para los Derechos Humanos
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Estimamos que Ud. Estaría interesado por recibir regularmente informaciones sobre las actividades del Sector de las Ciencias Sociales y Humanas de la UNESCO (SHS). Por ello, pensamos enviarle el 2ndo número de este boletín informativo electrónico que será publicado mensualmente.

Si Ud. ya no quiere obtener mas de estas informaciones, solo necesita hacer clic en el siguiente link: mailto:sympa@lists.unesco.org?subject=unsub%20news-shs.

Durante el presente mes de Mayo el Sector de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas de la UNESCO realiza la convocatoria de candidaturas para el Premio UNESCO de Educación para los Derechos Humanos. El nombre del laureado de la 15ª edición se dará a conocer el próximo 10 de diciembre, con motivo del Día de los Derechos Humanos.

El Premio se creó en 1978 en conmemoración del 30 aniversario de la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos. De una cuantía de 10.000 dólares estadounidenses, esta destinado a recompensar instituciones, organizaciones o personas que han contribuido de manera ejemplar al fomento del conocimiento de los derechos humanos. El galardonado recibe además un diploma y un trofeo, se trata de una escultura de bronce creada para la UNESCO por la artista japonesa Toshimi Isshii, y fimada “Toshi”.

Se invita a los Estados Miembros y Miembros Asociados de la UNESCO, a las organizaciones intergubernamentales y a todas las ONG que mantienen relaciones oficiales con la UNESCO a que presenten directamente las candidaturas de aquellas personalidades u organizaciones cuyas actividades merecen ser recompensadas con este premio.

Las instituciones nacionales e internacionales que contribuyen al desarrollo de la educación para los derechos humanos y a la creación de una cultura universal de los derechos humanos pueden asimismo presentar candidaturas a través de las Comisiones Nacionales para la del país donde se encuentre su sede.

Toda la información correspondiente a este premio se puede consultar, en inglés y en francés, en el sitio web del Sector de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas en la página: www.unesco.org/shs/human_rights_prize, página en la podrán telecargar el formulario de candidatura a enviar a más tardar el 21 de julio de 2006 al Sr. Vladimir Volodin, Secretario del Premio UNESCO de Educación para los Derechos Humanos, 1, rue Miollis, 75732 Paris cedex 15, tel.: + 33 1 45 68 38 45 / fax : (33-1) 45 68 57 26 / e-mail : uphre@unesco.org.

Por otra parte, comme, tal vez, Ud ya lo sabe en vez de apagar las velas el día un de su sexagésimo aniversario, la UNESCO optó por celebrar este evento por espacio de 60 semanas más. Desde Septiembre de 2005 hasta el próximo mes de Noviembre, la Organización ofrecerá cada semana a los Estados Miembros, a su propio personal, a todos sus colaboradores, así como al gran publico, la oportunidad de que conozcan más a fondo los programas que lleva a cabo.

Dentro de las 15 veces que el programa de las ciencias sociales y humanas será honorado en el marco del cumpleaños de la UNESCO, este mes des Mayo de 2006 será la ocasión de descubrir, o de redescubrir, la acción emprendida por el Sector encargado de llevar a cabo este programa (SHS) en el ámbito de la Prospectiva.

El próximo Martes 9 de Mayo, durante una reunión que será organizada de las 14 a 15 horas, varias personalidades de alto nivel tendrán « 60 minutos para convencer » de la utilidad de los estudios prospectivos…En efecto, como imaginar contribuir en preparar el futuro sin la utilización de espacios de anticipación? Y que papel pueden jugar las Organizaciones Internacionales en este ámbito?

Estas preguntas serán abordadas por el Sr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, antiguo Secretario general de las Naciones Unidas, la Sra. Hélé Béji, escritora, ensayista y novelista, y el Pr. Mohammed Arkoun, Profesor emérito de la universidad de “La Sorbonne” (Paris), durante esta reunión presidida por los directores de División de la Prospectiva y de la Oficina de la Información al publico de la UNESCO, Jérome Bindé y Saturnino Muñoz Gómez.

El mismo día, de 18h30 a 20h30, el Director general de la UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, abrirá, y presidirá los deabates de una nueva una nueva sesión de « las Entrevistas del siglo XXI », que es una de las actividades dichas « primordiales » de la Organización en el dominio de la Prospectiva. Sobre el Tema « Todo podrá desaparecer? Especies, idiomas, culturas y valores... », cuatro personalidades de renombre internacional intervendrán: el Sr. Jean Baudrillard, la Sra. Hélé Béji, el Sr. Norman Myers y el Sr. Adama Samassekou.

Es con placer que le invitamos a participar a estos dos eventos que tendrán lugar ambos en la Sede de la UNESCO, en Paris (Francia), y cuyos informes podrán ser consultados después en el sitio web de la UNESCO (www.UNESCO.org), navegando en las paginas consagradas al sexagésimo aniversario de la Organización o directamente en las del Sector de las Ciencias Sociales y Humanas.

Los Otros Eventos de este mes de Mayo:

el 4 de Mayo: el día después de la 3ra reunión del Comité director de la Coalición europea de las ciudades contra el racismo (ECCAR), que tuvo lugar el 3de Mayo, en la capital sueca, un taller sobre “la lucha contra las discriminaciones y el apoyo a la igualdad de los derechos” será desarrollado en el marco de la Conferencia europea “futuro Urbano 2.0”, co-organizado por la Ciudad de Estocolmo, el Ministerio de la Justicia sueco, y la Unión Europea, sobre el tema de la “Gobernabilidad Urbana”.

el 16 de Mayo: mesa redonda sobre el tema “Cultura e igualdad en la Unión Europea” con la participación de la profesora Sayla Benhabib de la Universidad de Yale, y de Valentine Moghadam, Jefe de la Sección igualdad de los géneros del Sector de las Ciencias Sociales y Humanas de la UNESCO. Sala XII del edificio Bonvin, UNESCO, París (Francia).

Del 17 al 19 de Mayo: reunión de expertos sobre los Géneros, organizada por la Oficina de la UNESCO en Bujumbura, será la ocasión de discutir la factibilidad y los mecanismos de lan puesta en marcha de un Programa de Estudios Superiores sobre las Mujeres y el Género en Burundi.

El 19 de Mayo: el libro de la Beijing y Beijing será presentado durante un taller organizado por la Oficina de la UNESCO en Beijing (China) sobre el desarrollo social durable de los barrios históricos de la ciudad china.

El 24 de Mayo: la inauguración de la nueva Cátedra UNESCO de bioética en la Universidad Nacional de Brasilia (Brasil) que marcara el punto de partida de una serie de reuniones organizadas durante el verano de 2006, en varios países de América Latina, para promover la Declaración Universal sobre la Bioética y los Derechos Humanos adoptada por la Conferencia General de la UNESCO, en octubre del 2005.

El 25 y 26 de Mayo: en la perspectiva del lanzamiento, en septiembre de 2006, de la Coalición de las ciudades africanas contra el racismo, una reunión regional reunirá expertos en Durban (África del Sur) para contribuir en la elaboración del plan de Acción en 10 Puntos que constituirá la plataforma común de compromisos de esta nueva Coalición.

Agenda del Sector de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas de la UNESCO:

Sitio web del Sector de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas de la UNESCO: www.unesco.org/shs/

Sitio web de la SHS Newsletter : www.unesco.org/shs/newsletter

----- Para recibir "SHS e-noticias" -----

sympa@lists.unesco.org

----- Contactos -----

John Crowley, Jefe SHS/EO/CIP: j.crowley@unesco.org
Cathy Bruno-Capvert Jefe de redacción, SHS Newsletter: c.bruno-capvert@unesco.org
Irakli Khodeli, Asistente de Prensa: i.khodeli@unesco.org
Petra van Vucht Tijssen, webmaster: p.van-vucht-tijssen@unesco.org

United Nations Capital Master Plan: In Detail

Date:
Thursday May 11, 2006

Time:
1:00-2:30 PM

Location:
Church Center of the UN
777 UN Plaza, 2nd Floor
(44th and 1st Ave.)
New York, NY 10017

RSVP:
Full contact information to:
Jessica Hartl, UNA-USA
202-462-3446
jhartl @ unausa.org

Featured Speaker

Louis Frederick Reuter IV
Assistant Secretary General, Executive Director
Capital Master Plan, United Nations

Background

Over the last six years the United Nations has been working on a renovation plan for its New York headquarters. The current plan is expected to cost between $1.2 and 1.6 billion. Recently, the Administrative and Budgetary Committee (Fifth Committee) of the General Assembly authorized $100.5 million to finance the design and pre-construction phases, with the United States disassociating itself from the consensus on this resolution. With delays and debates over such issues as how to finance the renovations, the UN is facing many challenges in the months ahead, as it attempts to reach a final decision on a renovation strategy. In this dialogue with the NGO community, Mr. Reuter will discuss the latest plan for renovation; how the UN arrived at this decision; problems/challenges faced in the process; financing sources and how financing will be structured; efforts being made to ensure sustained access to the buildings and sessions by outside groups (e.g. NGOs); and other relevant issues

World Press Freedom Day: AMARC calls for media law reform to support community radio

Le français suit
Espanol sigue

Colombo, 3 May 2006. On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day (3 May), AMARC, the World Association of Community Broadcasters, called upon governments worldwide to develop national policies and supportive legal frameworks that enable and encourage community media. The call for media law reform was endorsed by participants at the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference on "Media, Development and Poverty Eradication" held in Colombo, Sri Lanka 1 - 2 May 2006.

AMARC also marked World Press Freedom Day with the launch of a global study on community radio and its impact on poverty eradication. The study is to commence with an AMARC Asia-Pacific Community Radio Roundtable on 5 May in Colombo and will be followed with similar events in Latin America, Africa and Europe.

AMARC noted that the Asia -Pacific region has witnessed both positive and negative developments in community radio during the past year ranging from attacks on community radio stations to imminent legislation. A spate of community radio stations has mushroomed in South East Asia thanks to the opening of the airwaves in Indonesia and continuing growth in Thailand although there remain serious problems in the regulatory framework for community radio in both of these countries.

Despite being caught in the cross fire between Maoists and armed forces, community radio has also played a key role in the restoration of democracy in Nepal.

The good news did not extend to other parts of the South Asian region where antiquated laws continued to prevent community broadcasting. AMARC noted that legislation in countries such as Bangladesh and India is long over due and urged their governments to expedite the process. More than a decade after the Indian Supreme Court judgment of 1995 declared the airwaves to be public property, community radio remains to find legitimacy in India. A draft document of community radio has been languishing with a Group of Ministers for the past six months. Similarly, Bangladesh has also recently formulated draft legislation on community radio. The crucial question, however, was when these would be translated into legislation.

The AMARC study will include a global mapping of the state of community radio, assessment of the impact of the sector and the effectiveness of initiatives to support its further development. The results of study are to be presented at AMARC's Ninth World Conference to be held in Amman, Jordan, from 11-17 November 2006.

-ends-

Journée internationale de la liberté de la presse
AMARC appel à la réforme de loi touchant les médias pour supporter la radio communautaire

Colombo, 3 Mai 2006. À l'occasion de la journée internationale de la liberté de la presse, l'AMARC, l'Association mondiale des radiodiffuseurs communautaires, invites les gouvernements du monde entier à développer des politiques nationales et des cadres juridiques qui permettent et encouragent les médias communautaires. Les participants présents à la conférence de l'UNESCO "Les médias, le développement et l'élimination de la pauvreté" qui s'est tenue à Colombo, Sri Lanka le 1 et 2 mai 2006 ont appuyé l'appel de l'AMARC pour des réformes législatives.

L'AMARC a également marqué la journée internationale de la liberté de la presse avec le lancement d'une étude mondiale sur la radio communautaire et son impact sur l'élimination de la pauvreté. L'étude doit débuter le 5 mai avec la tenue d'une table ronde sur la radio communautaire en Asie-Pacifique qui est organiée par l'AMARC à Colombo et qui sera suivie par des événements semblables en Amérique latine, en Afrique et en Europe.

Durant la dernière année, la radio communautaire en Asie-Pacifique a été marqué par des développements positifs et négatifs allant d'attaques sur des stations de radio communautaires à l'avancement de législations. En Asie du Sud-Est, le nombre de radio communautaires a crû grâce à l'ouverture des ondes hertziennes en Indonésie et à leur croissance continue en Thaïlande. Cependant, il reste des écueils sérieux au cadre légal touchant la radio communautaire dans ces deux pays.

En dépit d'avoir été pris entre les feux croisés des maoïstes et des forces armées, la radio communautaire a également joué un rôle primordial dans la restauration de la démocratie au Népal.

Les bonnes nouvelles ne se sont pas étendues à d'autres parties de la région du Sud de l'Asie où les lois désuètes ont continué à empêcher le développement de la radiodiffusion communautaire. L'AMARC note que la législation dans des pays tels que le Bangladesh et l'Inde a un long retard à combler et encourge ces gouvernements à accelérer le processus. Plus d'une décennie après que le jugement de la cour suprême de l'Inde ait déclaré que les ondes hertziennes étaient propriété publique, la radio communautaire n'a toujours pas obtenu de légitimité. En effet, un projet de loi sur la radio communautaire est bloqué depuis les six derniers mois par un groupe de ministres. De son coté, le Bangladesh a récemment formulé une ébauche de législation sur la radio communautaire. La question cruciale, cependant, reste le moment ou ces projets de lois vont se transformer en lois.

L'étude de l'AMARC inclura un état des lieux de la radio communautaire à l'échelle internationale, l'évaluation de l'impact du secteur et de l'efficacité des initiatives pour soutenir son développement ultérieur. Les résultats de l'étude doivent être présentés à la conférence mondiale d'AMARC 9 qui se tiendra à Amman, Jordanie, du 11 au 17 novembre 2006.

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Dia de la Libertad de Prensa
AMARC llama a reformar la ley de medios para favorecer la radio comunitaria

Colombo, 3 de Mayo de 2006. Co ocasión del Día de la Libertad de prensa (3 de Mayo), la Asociación Mundial de radios Comunitarias, llamó a que los gobiernos de todo el mundo desarrollen políticas y marcos legales que favorezcan y propicien los medios comunitarios. El llamado para la reforma legislativa fue refrendado por los participantes en la Conferencia del Día de la Libertad de Prensa de UNESCO "Medios, Desarrollo y Erradicación de la Pobreza" que se desarrolló en Colombo, Sri Lanka el 1 y 2 de Mayo de 2006

AMARC también marcó el Día de la Libertad de Prensa con el inicio de un diagnóstico global de las radios comunitarias y su incidencia en la erradicación de la pobreza. El estudio comienza con la Mesa redonda de AMARC asia Pacífico del 5 de Mayo en Colombo y continuará con eventos similares en América latina, Africa y Europa.

AMARC destacó que en último año, la región Asia Pacífico ha vivido experiencias positivas y negativas que van desde ataques contra radios comunitarias hasta avances legislativos. Nuevas radios comunitarias han emergido en el Sur de Asia gracias a la apertura de las ondas en Indonesia y experimentan un crecimiento sostenido en Tailandia aunque subsisten serios problemas en el marco regulatorio de las radios comunitarias en ambos países.

A pesar de encontrarse en medio del fuego cruzado entre Maoistas y las Fuerzas Armadas, las radios comunitarias jugaron un rol importante en el restablecimiento de la democracia en Nepal.

Las buenas noticias no han llegado a otros países del Sur de Asia donde leyes caducas siguen previniendo la radiodifusión comunitaria. AMARC destacó que la legislación en países como Bangladesh e India debiera haber sido actualizada hace mucho tiempo y llamó a que los gobiernos aceleren los procesos. A pesar que hace más de una década, en 1995, la Corte Suprema de India declaró que las ondas eran de propiedad pública, las radios comunitarias todavía no obtienen legitimidad en India. Un borrador sobre la radio comunitaria está bloqueado por un grupo de ministros desde hace seis meses. Igualmente, en Bangladesh se ha formulado recientemente una propuesta legislativa sobre la radio comunitaria. La pregunta crucial es el cuando estos borradores se transformarán en leyes.

El estudio iniciado por AMARC comprenderá el diagnóstico de la situación de las radios comunitarias, la evaluación de la incidencia del sector y como pueden mejorar los resultados sobre el desarrollo con nuevas iniciativas. Los resultados de este estudio se presentarán en la Conferencia mundial AMARC9 que se realizará en Amán, Jordania del 11 al 17 de Noviembre de 2006.

-ends-

Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
May 2, 2006

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) aims to promote constructive perspectives and dialogue about Muslim-Western relations.

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ARTICLES IN THIS EDITION:

5. “Hip” hijab takes on Dutch prejudices by Leela Jacinto
New York-based journalist, Leela Jacinto, looks at how a Dutch graduate student, Cindy van den Bremen, has worked to reduce prejudice in her country and simultaneously provide women wearing the hijab with greater flexibility to participate in sports activities. With the advent of the “capstter”, a chic yet functional design that enables active Muslim women who choose to wear a head-covering to stay covered, van den Bremen has won the support of both Muslims and non-Muslims in the country. This functional hijab is only one aspect of her work to promote intercultural dialogue in the Netherlands: she encourages policy makers to actually engage with the women whom their policies will affect rather than emancipating them by unilaterally forcing them to comply with decrees from above.
(Source: The Christian Science Monitor, April 17, 2006)

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ARTICLE 1
British Muslims Gain Respect
Lee Marsden

Norwich, England - In the aftermath of the London bombings of July 2005, the British Muslim community has sought to become more involved in the political process. The main political parties have courted British Muslims with promises of greater representation at the local and national levels. At the same time, they have criticised community leaders for not being more politically active and engaged, resulting in some young Muslims turning to extremism. The local elections taking place across England on the 4th of May represent an opportunity for British Muslims to engage in the political process.

The 7/7 bombings last year and the ongoing war on terrorism have created a climate of fear and Islamophobia that is being exploited by British racists. British Muslims are faced with two alternatives: either to maintain a low profile and hope that tensions will subside over time, or to become active participants in the political discourse. It is by fully engaging in society and being involved that the current climate of fear can begin to dissipate. By reaching out across communities, mutual suspicions recede and a deeper understanding of, and respect for, other cultures and shared culture develop. Issues such as social inclusion, housing, crime, education and immigration affect everyone, and British Muslims need to be involved in addressing these issues through active participation in the political process.

The emergence of a new political party at the last general election provides British Muslims with an opportunity to shape the policies that affect their lives. The Respect –Unity Coalition is fielding 165 candidates in constituencies across the country, although most of its efforts will be concentrated in the East London constituencies of Newham and Tower Hamlets, areas with a high concentration of British Muslims. Respect was formed in 2004 as a coalition of British Muslims, socialists, environmentalists and anti-war campaigners searching for common ground.

Over half of the candidates being fielded by Respect are British Muslims, but as Newham candidate, Hanif Abdulmuhit, emphasises: “Respect is proud to say we defend the rights of Muslims, but we are not a party of Muslims, rather a party for Muslims, as well as Sikhs, Hindus, Jews, Christians, and all faiths and none.”

The party is campaigning on a range of local and international issues. In Tower Hamlets, it is calling for the council to be “the most democratic, green and publicly accountable council in the country. It should put people before profit. The council should defend its residents from the power of big corporations and be a showcase for high quality houses and services.” On international issues, it urges an end to the occupation in Iraq and is against any invasion of Iran. If Respect wins seats in Tower Hamlets and Newham, it will represent a significant vote of no-confidence in the Blair government’s policy on Iraq.

The emergence of Respect represents a positive aspect of multicultural society with diverse groups coming together and being able to campaign around issues whilst celebrating their diversity. This counters the negative impact of a racist campaign launched by the British National Party (BNP). The BNP has called the elections a “referendum on Islam”. They have sought to link the 7/7 bombings with lax immigration and asylum controls. The war on terror and fear of the “other” have been used to undermine multiculturalism and make scapegoats of British Muslims.

A recent report commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust suggests that as many as 25% of voters might vote for the BNP, and Employment Minister Margaret Hodge believes that eight out of ten “white” families in her constituency would vote for it.

Respect and the BNP are both fringe parties with little prospect of gaining control over any local authorities. But in an election where there is so little to choose from among the programmes of the main political parties, it is the relative success or failure of these fringe parties that will have the most impact on the nature of British society. One advocates partnership and cooperation in a multicultural society, the other separation and discrimination in a racist society.

In a message sent to every mosque and centre across the country, the Muslim Council of Britain has called on British Muslims to vote in order to highlight local concerns, participate in local civic duties and make Britain a better place. The relative success of Respect or the BNP in these elections will have an impact on British Muslim relations with the rest of society. It is therefore imperative that British Muslims exercise their vote.
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* Dr Lee Marsden is a researcher in international relations at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom. This article was commissioned by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), May 2, 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 2
YOUTH VIEWS
Beyond the smoke, there is solidarity among cultures
Victoria Harben

Tucson, Arizona - Behind a heavy haze and intense smell of what seems to be a mix of cigars and incense lies a colourful lounge full of college students sitting and chatting in deep-seated couches. Thumping, bass-heavy music shakes walls and eardrums alike. The Bubble Lounge, a hookah bar in Albuquerque, New Mexico is introducing Americans to Middle Eastern culture.

Hookah bars, where anyone can pay a small price to indulge in the traditional Middle Eastern practice of smoking flavoured tobacco, are the latest intersection of globalisation and youth culture. For the uninitiated, a hookah is a smoking device with a vase at the bottom containing water - to filter the tobacco - and a metal pipe, from which protrude the colourfully-decorated smoking tubes. Above this lies the heating mechanism, usually a thin slab of charcoal.

While there is more than a passing resemblance to certain devices commonly used to smoke illegal substances, hookahs are used only for regular or flavoured tobacco. Strawberry, cola, white peach, rose and dozens of various flavours of “shisha”, or tobacco, are available. Shisha is healthier than smoking cigarettes because the washing process used in producing it leaves behind much of the tar and nicotine. The shisha is then dried and soaked in molasses, honey and fruit to give it its distinctive flavour.

For Americans under the legal drinking age of 21 (but over 18, since tobacco is unavailable to minors), as well as for Muslim-Americans, a hookah lounge is a perfect hangout on a Saturday night. The phenomenon is not only giving older teenagers an alternative to illegal drinking, it’s also causing a convergence of cultures.

Hookah originated in India over a millennium ago and conquered most of the Middle East more than 500 years ago. Today, the trend has crossed the Atlantic and established itself in both major American cities and smaller college towns. From cafes in Cairo to bars in Baghdad, tearooms in Tucson to houses in Honolulu, hookahs seem to be everywhere.

This infusion of Middle Eastern culture in American life is promoting interaction with Muslims and a new interest in Middle Eastern culture. A group of girls at the Bubble Lounge sits at a table talking and laughing while they pass around the hookah’s hose. Two Americans, two sisters from Baghdad, and a Pakistani girl have gathered at the lounge to chat and smoke.

“It diversifies the cultures,” said Saba Mohammad, a native of Baghdad and current journalism sophomore at the University of New Mexico (UNM). “We can just relax with the hookah, people like it more than drinking or cigarettes. It’s a great alternative to partying, which I’m not interested in.”

Alicia Garcia, a media arts sophomore also attending UNM, thinks smoking hookah brings about a positive cross-cultural exchange. “Being in this environment helps to educate people about the positives of the Middle East,” she said. “When you’re here experiencing the culture with people from all over the world, you forget the unfair negativity that’s been portrayed by the media and this nation for the past decade.”

Garcia has been friends with Mohammad, the owner, for years, but that doesn’t stop them from learning new things about each other’s cultures. “We teach each other a lot,” said Garcia. “Diversifying your social group can really broaden horizons.”

As the group of girls continue chatting around their hookah, they order a special kind - double apple - which, according to Mohammed, is only available to VIP customers, and the music suddenly becomes louder. Three belly-dancers appear in the doorway and begin to make their way around the room.

Cheers erupt from the sidelines as the dancers shake to the Middle Eastern music and the clientele watches, entranced by the performance.

Behind the bead curtain of the Bubble Lounge lies a different world where cultures intertwine and the stereotypes of the outside world are forgotten. Here at least, it seems ignorance and hatred can be dissolved in a puff of apple-flavoured smoke.

###
* Victoria Harben is a third-year student of journalism at the University of Arizona. This article was commissioned by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), May 2, 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 3
Talk to Iran, President Bush
Statement published in the International Herald Tribune

The undersigned, a group of former foreign ministers from Europe and North America, find disturbing the reports that the Bush administration may be actively planning to launch military strikes soon against possible nuclear weapons facilities in Iran.

Such reports, though denied by the administration, raise alarms nevertheless. Similar reports, and similar denials, preceded the administration's decision in 2003 to invade Iraq.

We accept Iran's legitimate right to pursue civilian nuclear power with appropriate international safeguards.

European leaders have made strenuous efforts to negotiate a solution that met Iran's energy development needs while ensuring respect for non-proliferation norms. Unfortunately, Iran's government continues to resist accepting verifiable constraints on its development of all elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, including large-scale uranium enrichment facilities that could be used to manufacture fuel for nuclear weapons.

The threatening and outrageous rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has evoked understandable concern in Israel and other countries about Iranian intentions. Israel also has legitimate security concerns about Tehran's growing military capabilities.

Although these discussions have proven only partly successful, a unilateral American use of force against Iran would likely have disastrous effects on the international security environment. It is doubtful than a "surgical" air strike could succeed in destroying all of Iran's nuclear assets, while a large-scale invasion and military occupation of the country is widely recognised as unmanageable.

Even if American air power succeeded in disrupting for some time Tehran's ability to develop nuclear weapons, Iran could well find others means - including terrorism - to retaliate against Western interests in the region and elsewhere.

Such a unilateral use of force by Washington would find little support within Europe and would further undermine trans-Atlantic relations just as they were recovering from the divisions created by the invasion of Iraq.

Russia and China would certainly oppose such a move. Even close American allies in Asia and Latin America would object to a U.S. military action against Iran under present circumstances. Fearing the long-term consequences for their security of an even more radicalised Iranian regime, Turkey, Egypt and other nearby countries would have new grounds to pursue their own nuclear programs, further undermining the global non-proliferation regime.

We cannot exclude the fact that the United States might eventually conclude that military action might prove warranted. We are suggesting another course. The potential risks of using force are sufficiently grave that we instead urge the United States to pursue a bold non-military option first.

We believe that the Bush administration should pursue a policy it has shunned for many years: attempt to negotiate directly with Iranian leaders about their nuclear program.

The administration has already taken the first step in engaging the Iranian government on regional security issues when it authorised its ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, to discuss questions relating to the situation in Iraq with representatives of the Iranian government (hopefully with Iraqis also included). We applaud the administration's decision, but call on it to widen the dialogue and raise it to a higher level, by developing a dialogue on nuclear security issues as well.

Some might consider the current Iranian government an unwilling dialogue partner. Yet every European member of our group has met with influential Iranian officials during the past few months and found a widespread interest among them in conducting a broad discussion with the United States on security issues.

Government leaders in Europe, Russia and Asia also believe that direct talks between Washington and Tehran could prove more fruitful now that the European and Russian-Iranian engagements on Iran's nuclear program have made some progress in communicating mutual positions and concerns.

Accordingly, we call on the U.S. administration, hopefully with the support of the trans-Atlantic community, to take the bold step of opening a direct dialogue with the Iranian government on the issue of Iran's nuclear program.

###
* The statement is signed by former foreign ministers Madeleine Albright of the United States, Joschka Fischer of Germany, Jozias van Aartsen of the Netherlands, Bronislaw Geremek of Poland, Hubert Védrine of France and Lydia Polfer of Luxembourg. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: International Herald Tribune April 26, 2006
Visit the website at www.iht.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 4
Islam Is Innocent
Sheikh Abdul Mohsen

Riyadh - Due to the regrettable events that took place recently between Egypt's Muslims and Christians, I decided to postpone my article concerning the codification of the shari'a and dedicate this piece to that matter of jurisprudence which relates to the dealing with, and treatment of, non-Muslims.

Islam is a religion of mercy and justice. It was revealed to bring happiness to humanity and to deliver people from darkness. Islam is not about shedding blood or violating the rights of others.

As to how Islam deals with non-Muslims, jurisprudence has identified four categories. The first category is Ahl al-Zimma, non-Muslim citizens of an Islamic state living under Islamic law. This refers to those whose countries were conquered by Muslims many years ago and who have lived under their protection throughout the centuries. As it was the Muslims who had entered their countries, Islam emphasised preserving the rights of these people, the security of their places of worship and their freedom of worship.

As for the tax to be paid by non-Muslims, it is similar to the tax paid by Muslims and goes directly to the Bayt al-Mal, the Muslim Treasury. It is used to protect these populations. Most non-Muslim citizens in Egypt and countries of the Levant are classified as such and so their rights are maintained and secured by Islam.

The second category is the Mu'ahidoon, those whose governments are at peace with the Muslim state. They constitute the majority of non-Muslim citizens and their rights cannot be violated. Their well-being and property cannot be harmed by Muslims.

The third category is the Musta'mineen, citizens that come from a country that is at war with the Muslims but who have asked for protection under Islamic law or through the support of a Muslim. They should also be protected by Muslims and be permitted to stay in their countries.

The final category is the Harbyeen, citizens of countries at war with Muslims. As long as they have not sought the protection of Muslims, those citizens have no rights. However, I should emphasise here that with this group, only the Muslim rulers can be the ones to have declared war on them.

Thus, the latest events that took place in Alexandria, Egypt are in fact un-Islamic acts of violation carried out against non-Muslim minorities in Muslim states, a group which, of the four categories mentioned, ought to be the first to be protected.

Therefore, I strongly condemn the clashes that took place in Alexandria and state clearly that Islam has nothing to do with these acts that run contrary to the interests of Muslims also. Such events in fact defame the image of Islam and Muslims. These clashes provoke disorder and seek to weaken the solid structures of Muslim states, which some could use as a pretext to harm Muslims.

###
* Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Bin Nasser Al Obeikan is a member of Saudi Arabia's Shura council and a judiciary consultant for the Saudi Ministry of Justice. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Asharq Alawsat April 25, 2006
Visit the website at www.asharqalawsat.com/english
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
For reprint permission, please contact the original publication.

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ARTICLE 5
“Hip” hijab takes on Dutch prejudices
Leela Jacinto

Son en Breugel, The Netherlands – In 1999, while seeking a graduate project idea at the Design Academy of Eindhoven, Cindy van den Bremen found a problem-solving opportunity.

The Dutch Commission of Equal Treatment had recently ruled that high schools could prohibit Muslim girls from wearing head coverings in gym class. Girls were advised to wear turtlenecks teamed with swim caps. But some were ignoring the sartorial advice, preferring instead to skip gym all together.

At about that time, the Dutch were beginning to become disillusioned with multiculturalism - a trend that was to intensify in the next few years with the death of maverick anti-immigrant politician Pim Fortuyn and the murder of film-maker Theo Van Gogh by a radical Dutch Islamist.

For Ms. van den Bremen, the phys-ed class controversy offered a means to marry her political sense of injustice with her professional expertise. "I realised that if the hijabs did not look traditional, but hip and trendy, they could possibly change prejudice into some sort of admiration," says the young Dutch designer.

Within months, the "capster" was born, and quickly blossomed into a business. In four styles designed for tennis, skating, aerobics and outdoor sports, van den Bremen's head coverings were sleek, safe and - in the words of a local Islamic cleric - "Islamically correct."

Even an elderly man at her graduation show, who told her he didn't like the hijab at all, said he did like her designs. "This made me realise even more that the social problem with the acceptance of the hijab was not about the girls being covered, but the way they are covered," says van den Bremen.

Initially, she expected that she'd be done with the capsters after graduation. But the capsters' popularity has grown steadily, and grateful feedback she receives and the clamour for more such products has encouraged her to expand her small business operation.

For Farah Azwai, an athletic undergraduate at the American Intercontinental University in London who started wearing the hijab at age 16, the capster was a relief.

"Before I had the capsters, I tried a number of things - I used to wear a bandanna and tried fixing my hijab in different ways but it wasn't very practical and I always had problems," says Ms. Azwai, who bought the "skate" and "outdoors" models online. "The fabric and style is very modern, it totally suits my style - it goes well with my sports clothes, with brands like Nike, Adidas and Pineapple."

Van den Bremen's business expansion plans include increasing production of the four current lines to keep up with demand as well as new lines of "breathable" capsters for tropical climates.

She also has designs on promoting intercultural dialogue. She recently teamed with Dutch Iranian photographer Giti Entezami to produce Sharing Motives, a book featuring 25 Dutch women in a variety of hijabs. The duo has since expanded their project to an exhibition - currently on display at the University of Utrecht - accompanied by a series of lectures and debates.

More than a year after Van Gogh's killing sparked a violent anti-Muslim backlash, experts say a pressing need for intercultural dialogue remains in the Netherlands. A recent Pew Global Attitudes study found the Netherlands to be the only Western country where a majority of the population - 51 percent - views Muslims unfavourably.

Amid a recent slew of immigration-tightening measures, beefed-up citizenship tests and controversial anti-terrorism programmes inviting citizens to report "suspect people", Muslim community leaders say a proposed ban on the burqa - an all-enveloping Islamic covering for women - is yet another shot in the Netherlands' rising Islamophobia.

"There are two sets of standards in this country," says Famille Arslan, a prominent Dutch Muslim lawyer. "One is for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. This law not only discriminates against religion and gender, it also threatens to further polarise the people."

In December, the Dutch parliament approved a ban on the burqa and other Islamic veils that cover the face in all public places. The measure - which was introduced by conservative politician Geert Wilders - is currently awaiting approval from a commission examining the legality of such a ban under European human rights laws.

If passed, it would be one of the most restrictive responses to Islamic clothing in Europe. Defenders of the ban note that the measure does not apply to the head-scarf (or capster), merely to Islamic garments that cover the face such as the burqa and the niqab, a facial veil with an opening for the eyes. Experts estimate that only about 50 to 100 women among Holland's 1 million Muslims currently don such extensive veiling.

Despite widespread criticism, Mr. Wilders is determined to push his initiative through the legal process. "I hope to succeed with my motion because I believe I have broad popular support," he says in a phone interview. "Parliament has followed public opinion, but the government can act differently for political reasons."

Van den Bremen bemoans the lack of intercultural dialogue. "It seems like no one is discussing things with the girls. They always talk about the girls," she says. "I was struck by how emancipated they were. They were demanding to be judged by their capacity, not their looks."

###
* Leela Jacinto is a New York-based journalist who writes on Middle Eastern and South Asian affairs.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor, April 17, 2006
Visit the website at www.csmonitor.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
(c) Copyright 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. For reprint permission please contact lawrenced@csps.com.

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) provides news, op-eds, features and analysis by local and international experts on a broad range of issues affecting Muslim-Western relations. CGNews-PiH syndicates articles that are balanced and solution-oriented to news outlets worldwide. With support from the Norwegian government and the United States Institute of Peace, this news service is a non-profit initiative of Search for Common Ground, an international NGO working in the field of conflict transformation.

This news service is one outcome of a set of working meetings held in partnership with His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan in June 2003.

~YOUTH VIEWS~

CGNews-PiH also regularly publishes the work of student leaders and journalists whose articles strengthen intercultural understanding and promote constructive perspectives and dialogue in their own communities. Student journalists and writers under the age of 27 are encouraged to write to cbinkley@sfcg.org for more information on contributing.
*The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors, not of CGNews-PiH or its affiliates.

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Chris Binkley (Dakar)
Medhy Hidayat (Jakarta)
Elyte Baykun (Washington)
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AMARC Declaration on Press freedom Day

World Press Freedom Day:
AMARC calls for media law reform to support community radio

Colombo, 3 May 2006. On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day (3 May), AMARC, the World Association of Community Broadcasters, called upon governments worldwide to develop national policies and supportive legal frameworks that enable and encourage community media. The call for media law reform was endorsed by participants at the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference on "Media, Development and Poverty Eradication" held in Colombo, Sri Lanka 1 - 2 May 2006.

AMARC also marked World Press Freedom Day with the launch of a global study on community radio and its impact on poverty eradication. The study is to commence with an AMARC Asia-Pacific Community Radio Roundtable on 5 May in Colombo and will be followed with similar events in Latin America, Africa and Europe.

AMARC noted that the Asia -Pacific region has witnessed both positive and negative developments in community radio during the past year ranging from attacks on community radio stations to imminent legislation. A spate of community radio stations has mushroomed in South East Asia thanks to the opening of the airwaves in Indonesia and continuing growth in Thailand although there remain serious problems in the regulatory framework for community radio in both of these countries.

Despite being caught in the cross fire between Maoists and armed forces, community radio has also played a key role in the restoration of democracy in Nepal.

The good news did not extend to other parts of the South Asian region where antiquated laws continued to prevent community broadcasting. AMARC noted that legislation in countries such as Bangladesh and India is long over due and urged their governments to expedite the process. More than a decade after the Indian Supreme Court judgment of 1995 declared the airwaves to be public property, community radio remains to find legitimacy in India. A draft document of community radio has been languishing with a Group of Ministers for the past six months. Similarly, Bangladesh has also recently formulated draft legislation on community radio. The crucial question, however, was when these would be translated into legislation.

The AMARC study will include a global mapping of the state of community radio, assessment of the impact of the sector and the effectiveness of initiatives to support its further development. The results of study are to be presented at AMARC's Ninth World Conference to be held in Amman, Jordan, from 11-17 November 2006.

Dear Friend!

Please see my book Making Enemies: Humiliation and International Conflict soon being available both as ebook and as hardcover at http://www.greenwood.com/books/printFlyer.aspx?sku=C9109 .

Please see also www.humiliationstudies.org/whoweare/evelin04.php.

Most gratefully, thanking you for your kind interest!

Evelin
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Evelin G. Lindner, M.D., Ph.D. (Dr. med.), Ph.D. (Dr. psychol.) Social Scientist
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Founding Manager of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS, http://www.humiliationstudies.org), anchored at the Columbia University Conflict Resolution Network, New York,
affiliated with the University of Oslo, Department of Psychology (see http://folk.uio.no/evelinl/),
Senior Lecturer, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Department of Psychology (see http://psyweb.svt.ntnu.no/ansatte/),
and affiliated with the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris
------------------------------------

Equity & Excellence in Education
Special Issue: Class and Education

Class Action is guest editing an issue of Equity & Excellence in Education on Class and Education.

We are currently soliciting manuscripts for a special theme issue on Class and Education. For more about the Aims and Scope of Equity and Excellence in education please see, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10665684.asp We welcome scholarly research, as well as, well-documented descriptive articles that examine topics such as the following:

• Education as Class Marker or as Class Liberator
• Education about Class and Classism
• Education as Access Channel to Class Mobility
• Changing Class: Education and Social Change
• Working Class Studies
• Class and Standardized Testing
• Social Class and Adult Education
• Private/Independent vs. Public Schools
• Tax Policy and School Funding
• Philanthropy and Education
• The Charter School Phenomenon
• Class and the School Privatization Movement
• School Technology and School Funding
• Class, Military Recruitment, and Education
• Cross Class Educators
• Special Education, Disability and Class
• Intersections of Class and Race in Education
• Magnet Schools
• Class Implications of No Child Left Behind
• Visions of an Anti-Classist Educational System
• Cross Class Relationships in Educational Settings
• Student Financial Aid and Class in Higher Education
• Issues Related to Class Inequality in Education (pre-K through adult ed)
• Differing Graduation, Retention, and Transfer Rates Among Students of Different Class Backgrounds
• Creative Pedagogies/Programs for Meeting First Generation College Students’ Needs
• Elite Education and the Reproduction of the Class System
• Class in the Classroom or What Have You Learned About Class in School Today
• Class Culture and Education: The Hidden Rules of Class
• The Impact of Students with Less Class Privilege Going Into a More Privileged Environment
• Economic and Racial Integration (and/or Tracking) (and/or Re-segregation) in Schools
• Intersections of Class and Gender and/or Sexuality in Education
• Teachers Experience in Cross Class School Environments
• The Content of Education: What’s Taught and For What Purpose
• Zero Tolerance Policies and Criminalization and the Schools
• Maintaining a Class of Working Poor: Denying higher ed. access to immigrant youth
• Moving Beyond Classsim in Service Learning: Service Learning Projects That Break Down Class Barriers
• How Your Zip Code Can Predict Your College Access/Success
• Pulling the Plug on Public Education: The Un-Support of Public Education

Submission Guidelines

Complete manuscripts are due November 15, 2006. Submit three “masked” paper (hard) copies plus a disk with separate cover title page including author contact information. Suggested article length: 25 double-spaced pages. Please indicate in your cover letter that the submission is for the special issue on Class and Education.

Mail to: Equity & Excellence in Education, Hills South 370, School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003.

For author guidelines, please visit the journal website (http://www.eee-journal.com). All submissions are peer reviewed.

Contact Felice Yeskel, Co-Director Class Action, with any questions related to this special issue: fyeskel @ classism.org

--

Felice Yeskel, Ed.D.
Co-Director Class Action
PO Box 1300
Northampton, MA 01061
(413) 585 9709 x 202
(413) 585-9709 FAX
fyeskel @ classism.org
www.classism.org

Call for Papers: Research in Social Movements, Conflicts & Change

Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, an annual peer-reviewed volume published by Elsevier Science/JAI Press, encourages submissions for Volumes 27 and 28. Both of these volumes will be non-thematic: submissions appropriate to any of the three broad foci reflected in the series title will be considered.

Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change (RSMCC) is a fully peer-reviewed series of original research that has been published annually for over 25 years. We continue to publish the work of many of the leading scholars in social movements, social change, and peace and conflict studies. Although RSMCC enjoys a wide library subscription base for the book versions, all volumes are now published both in book form and also on-line through Elsevier's ScienceDirect program. This online access will ensure wider distribution and easier access to your scholarship while maintaining the book series at the same time.

To be guaranteed consideration for inclusion in Volume 27, due out in spring 2007, papers must arrive by June 10, 2006.

Send submissions to RSMCC editor, Patrick Coy, Center for Applied Conflict Management, Kent State University, PO Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242.

Send four paper copies, an electronic version, and remove all self-references save for on the title page.

RSMCC Website:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/BS_RSMCC/description#description

********************************************************
Patrick G. Coy
Director, and Associate Professor
Center for Applied Conflict Management (CACM)
Kent State University
Box 5190
Kent, OH 44242
*********************************************************

AfricAvenir News are kindly sent out by Eric Van Grasdorff:

Liebe Freunde,

hiermit möchten wir Sie nochmal ganz besonders herzlich zu unserem ersten Märchenabend mit Babacar Mbaye Ndaak "Leebon Ci Leer – Märchen im Licht des Mondes" am Sa., den 06. Mai 2006 um 20.00 Uhr im Auswärtigen Amt einladen. Wichtig für alle Interessierten: Anmeldung bis 03.Mai per E-Mail: a.helfrich@africavenir.org oder Mobilfunk: 0172-3000 521. Eintritt: 12 Euro / 8 Euro.

Außerdem möchten wir Sie schon in dieser Mail darauf hinweisen, dass sich die Ankündigungen zu unseren Veranstaltungen besonders im Mai häufen werden. Wir bitten um Ihr Verständnis und hoffen natürlich, dass Sie möglichst zahlreich unser Kultur- und Bildungsangebot besuchen werden.

Weitere Veranstaltungen im Rahmen des Märchenprojekts: http://www.africavenir.com/africavenir/berlin/literature/tales/index.php

Weitere AfricAvenir Veranstaltungen im Mai/Juni: http://www.africavenir.com/africavenir/berlin/africanreflections/index.php

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Call for Programs: NATIONAL MULTICULTURAL CONFERENCE AND SUMMIT 2007

The Psychology of Multiple Identities: Finding Empowerment in the Face of Oppression
Seattle, Washington,
Sheraton Hotel, Seattle, WA
January 24-26, 2007

DUE DATE FOR PROGRAM SUBMISSIONS:
Wednesday, May 31, 2007

Go to www.multiculturalsummit.org to submit a proposal

MISSION:
The mission of the National Multicultural Conference and Summit (NMCS) is to convene students, practitioners, and scholars in psychology and related fields to discuss human diversity and multiculturalism. Participants engage in a critical discourse on extant research and practice facing psychologists and educators. The objective of the 2007 NMCS is to explore the intersections of social identities, to understand how individuals, groups and communities are empowered, and to elevate frequently unheard voices. We believe that multiculturalism creates opportunities as well as challenges within the context of constantly negotiating multiple levels of privileges and oppressions. This conference is designed to explore how psychologists understand, intervene, and promote multiple identities.

While we acknowledge the vast diversity of cultures within the dimensions of age, race, ethnicity, and geographic region, the 2007 conference specifically addresses the intersection of the dimensions of race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, social class, age, ability, and gender.

53 Papers in SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE: 1965-2005

HENRY SANOFF

AARDVARK PUBLISHING COMPANY
ISBN: 1-59971-813-8

This collection of papers spans a period of four decades representing my academic and professional career. In searching for a common theme titles such as design research or environment and behavior were considered, however, social architecture appeared to be a better fit. Although several papers focus on a search for knowledge in an effort to explain people's environmentally related attitudes and behavior, the main thrust of my work is aimed at proposing methods for reshaping the design process in my belief that architects should improve the world-- before somebody fouls it up even further. In a democratic and open society like ours, peoples needs and preferences are ignored only at great peril.

The proliferation of journals, conferences, and interest groups related to environment and behavior issues that marked the past several decades can be conceived as being fragmented or disjointed efforts. Yet, specialization also allowed more researchers to find a niche, ultimately increasing opportunities for their involvement. However, a considerable number of papers that represent this research effort are located in obscure publications, some of which are out-of-print and no longer accessible. Recognizing that my work, too, may be lost in forgotten publications, I assembled this volume to allow others who follow to build upon my efforts.

This anthology addresses a wide variety of topics concerning social architecture. Naming just a few of the papers included in this compilation are such topics as Gaming Methods, Youth's Perception of Residential Cues, User Assessments, Building Evaluation, House Form and Preference, Behavior Settings, and Neighborhood Perception.

Dear Friends,

Winning Words: Individual Differences in Linguistic Style among U.S. Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates

Richard B. Slatcher,, Cindy K. Chung, James W. Pennebaker, Lori D. Stone

Abstract

The present study examines the personalities and psychological states of the 2004 candidates for U.S. president and vice president through their use of words. The transcripts of 271 televised interviews, press conferences, and campaign debates of John Kerry, John Edwards, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney between January 4 and November 3, 2004 were analyzed using a computerized text analysis program. Distinct linguistic styles were found among these four political candidates, as well as differences between political parties and candidate types. Drawing on previous research linking word use and personality characteristics, the results suggest that the candidates had unique linguistic styles variously associated with cognitive complexity, femininity, depression, aging, presidentiality, and honesty.

Keywords: Personality; Language use; Presidential election; Political psychology

Please read the entire text at http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Students/Slatcher/cv/winningwords_jrp.pdf