From: “Yavuz Hekim” <yavuzhekim@yavuzhekim.com>
Date: June 30, 2009
 
 
 

Dear Editor in Chief
 
As an actor who has played the role of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 6 Films in Turkey, I would like to make an interview with your newspaper by e-mail
 
Information about myself is given below.
 
Sincerely yours
 
Cell  00 90 532 482 24 28
 
Yavuz HEKİM                      www.yavuzhekim.com 

Click here to download the PDF

The National Museum of the American Indian presents a public symposium on Saturday,

June 27, 2009 from 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Mother Earth: Confronting the Challenge of Climate Change

Please join us after the symposium for an Indian Summer Showcase Concert featuring Andes Manta performing traditional music from the Andean Highlands at 5:00 p.m. at the Museum’s Welcome Plaza.

These events are free and open to the public.

Symposium information:
Native peoples are responding to the urgent challenge of climate change in creative ways, calling on traditional knowledge and adapting new technologies to craft solutions to this planetary crisis. Join us at this important symposium for engaging presentations and lively discussion about innovative indigenous strategies, from the Arctic to Amazonia. Speakers include Patricia Cochran (Inupiat), chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council; Robert Gough of the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy (Intertribal COUP); Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez (Ribereño/Caboclo), director of international programs, Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC), Columbia University; and Deborah Tewa (Hopi), renewable energy specialist and educator. Moderated by José Barreiro (Taino), assistant director for research, National Museum of the American Indian.

Please help spread the word.
Mother Earth: Confronting the Challenge of Climate Change
Saturday, June 27, 2009, 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
National Museum of the American Indian
Elmer and Mary Louise Rasmuson Theater
4th Street and Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC

Metro: L’Enfant Plaza, Maryland Avenue/Smithsonian Museums exit
For further information, please contact  NMAI-SSP at si.edu

             Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University.

Revisioning Human-Earth Relations

 http://fore.research.yale.edu/index.html

The Forum on Religion and Ecology is the largest international multireligious project of its kind. With its conferences, publications, and website it is engaged in exploring religious worldviews, texts, and ethics in order to broaden understanding of the complex nature of current environmental concerns.

The Forum recognizes that religions need to be in dialogue with other disciplines (e.g., science, ethics, economics, education, public policy, gender) in seeking comprehensive solutions to both global and local environmental problems.

Forum Coordinators:
Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, Yale University

Forum Administrative Assistant:
Tara C. Maguire Knopick, Yale University

Forum Web Content Managers and Newsletter Editors:
Sam Mickey and Elizabeth McAnally, California Institute of Integral Studies

With thanks to Anne Custer for the original development of the Forum Web site, and Ann Keeler Evans and Donna Rosenberg for their administrative work with the Forum.

————-

Summer Solstice Celebration with Paul Winter & Friends

Dear Forum community,

We want to inform you about the Summer Solstice Celebration with Paul Winter & Friends on Saturday, June 20, 2009. The two-hour concert will begin at 4:30 a.m. and will be held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (1047 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY).

Paul Winter will be joined by an array of outstanding musicians from different musical backgrounds for a festival of the Earth’s music as we greet the summer and one of the longest days of the year. The Summer Solstice Celebration is a sublime experience; the first rays of sunlight filter through the Cathedral’s stained glass above the High Altar as guest artists and members of the Paul Winter Consort perform in different parts of the Cathedral. The musicians meet at the stage in the Great Crossing as morning overtakes night and we welcome the day.

This celebration will be dedicated to Thomas Berry.

For more information, including free music downloads, visit: http://solsticeconcert.com/

Tickets are now on sale at: https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/729160…

Warmly,
The Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale
 http://www.yale.edu/religionandecology

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the
violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about
45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that
thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to
work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician
playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried
up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw
the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but
the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late
for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged
him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the
mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the
time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents,
without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for
a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He
collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one
noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best
musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever
written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
 
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater
in Boston and the seats averaged $100.
 
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was
organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about
perception, taste and priorities of people.         The outlines were: in a
commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour:

Do we perceive beauty?

Do we stop to appreciate it?

Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
 
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not
have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world
playing the best music ever written on an almost priceless instrument, how
many other things are we missing?

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

—————–

 I got this by e-mail from a family friend that will be going with my wife to a listen to Joshua Bell playing at The Lincoln Center Philharmonic Hall. That Washington experiment of the article has something to teach everyone of us. Specially I was impressed by the implication of what we do to our children. It is not just that we settle them with the destroyed environment and with our debts - we cause them to be like us!

Paintings and Poems: Eco-warriors and Freedom Gardens
by Jane Evershed

In vibrant colors, forms and rhyme, one of Jane Evershed’s paintings and
poems calls out the perceptions, wisdom and mission of the Eco-warriors.

In Sustain, one is presented with the choice between slavery and living
off the grid by taking the first step of gardening.

To view the paintings with the poems,
visit: http://www.CultureChange.org/go.html?447

***

Poem of the Eco-warriors

Till all is concrete with nothing green anywhere.

No poem should ever have a web address in it
But really we are talking about health on this planet,
So here they are, they even rhyme
Visit http://www.src-mn.org
and http://www.worldwidewamm.org
No internet? Go to your library and connect.

A garden is only a tiny first step,
For until we have learned to live off the grid,
Slavery to empirical currency is what the “master” bids,
And hooked up to this synthetic “life support” system
We become, the living dead, hearts disconnected from heads.
Patriots of disparity and uniformed idiots of dread.

***

To view the paintings with the poems,
visit: http://www.CultureChange.org/go.html?447

* * * * *

Culture Change
P.O. Box 4347, Arcata, CA 95518 USA, tel/fax: 1-215-243-3144
 http://culturechange.org

 Daniel Levy, a Senior Fellow and Director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative at The Century Foundation and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation writes to us:

I thought I’d share with you my thoughts on the speech which are pasted below.

The Obama team’s remarkable wordsmithery and the president’s unparalleled capacity for delivery were exquisitely on display again today in Cairo. But this speech should perhaps be remembered as much for what was not said. Gone was the arrogance and lecturing: there was no lavishing of praise on Egypt’s undemocratic leader – the word ‘Mubarak’ was not even mentioned once. Out too was the purple finger version of democratization and even the traditional American condescension toward the Palestinian narrative. But perhaps most remarkably of all, the words ‘terror’ or ‘terrorism’ did not pass the president’s lips. Here was a leader and a team around him smart enough to acknowledge that certain words have become too tainted, too laden with baggage, their use has become counter-productive, today the Global War on Terror framing was truly laid to rest.

Particularly striking was that President Obama almost certainly has emerged from the Cairo speech having accumulated additional capital rather than expending it, with greater popularity, traction, and respect among not only his ostensible target audience, the Muslim world, but also globally, including at home in America and even in Israel and with the world’s Jewish community. His future leverage across a range of issues has been enhanced.

It’s true that whenever the speech descended from the lofty heights of 30,000 feet to the 100-feet resolution of policy specifics and details, the magic dust seemed to dissipate as it emerged from the clouds, and those details were too often more autopilot than reset. But this was a big picture speech, and there is room later to make those course corrections on policy detail.

Here then are ten quick thoughts:

1. The Mother of All Resets

The president’s speech literally in one fell swoop will have much of the Muslim world and certainly elites, opinion leaders, and activists scratching their heads and recalibrating their stance toward America. Yes, for everyone the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, what comes next and whether policy changes on specific issues. The immediate effect though is to buy America space and time. It gives those who share an affinity with American values a new lease of life, causes the majority who are not hostile to the US but deeply skeptical of its intentions to reconsider and suspend judgment, and it will induce in America’s enemies a splitting headache.

At a most basic level, the president managed to connect. He spoke humbly and touched on buzz words for this audience, discussing dignity, justice, and the truths we hold in our hearts. He even uttered the word colonialism and mentioned denial of rights and cold-ward proxies. Obama evoked Islam’s contribution to the world and to America, and yes, he quoted the Quran.  Above all, he restored balance, confining the label of enemy only to those violent extremists who threaten America’s security, while opening up to the vast majority of practicing Muslims, including, I would argue, Islamist movements.

2. In Cairo the Conversation with Political Islam Began

By narrowly focusing on al-Qaeda as the enemy and apparently articulating an understanding of the non-al-Qaeda Islamist narrative, the president seemed to extend a tentative but visibly unclenched fist to mainstream political Islam. It is those Islamist movements that we should be most closely watching in the weeks and months ahead as they begin to work through their own responses to the new administration.

Obama seemed to implicitly accept the legitimacy of political Islam and its role in the democratic process while challenging it to unequivocally reject violence against civilians. There was a stark contrast, for instance, between the president’s message to al-Qaeda (we will defeat you if you threaten us) as compared to his message to Hamas (whom he addressed directly as having a role to fulfill Palestinian aspirations and unify the Palestinian people).

The president’s historical analogies may not have been the best ones. In discussing the nonviolent resistance of black America to the “lash of the whip” in achieving equal rights he obviously made a powerful and reasonable point but one that may be more relevant to a Palestinian struggle for a one-state democracy rather than for national liberation and de-occupation. By claiming that the same story can be told in South Africa and elsewhere, he simply rewrote history – the ANC did of course use armed resistance in their struggle as did so many other successful liberation movements.

That said, Obama’s effort to carry the argument in somewhat sympathetic terms to the Palestinian resistance–“violence…rockets…is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered”–was a valiant one and should be encouraged, not least in Israel. I might be reading too much into this but the speech could be seen as an acknowledgement that a process that engages Hamas is more likely to produce results than one that does not.

Responding immediately on al-Jazeera, Ahmed Yusuf, advisor to Gaza Prime Minister Haniyeh, lavished praised on Obama’s “Martin Luther King-like speech” and his rejection of the clash of civilizations discourse while defensively questioning his call for Hamas to accept the international community’s three preconditions (end violence, accept past agreements, recognize Israel).The distinction though was clear and the years of wrong-headedly lumping together the Salafist jihadis of al-Qaeda with the Muslim Brothers of Hamas or the Hezbollah movement is over.

3. Regaining the Moral Clarity of 9/11

Almost eight years on, there it was, an American president explaining to the world what happened on that day and the war of necessity against al-Qaeda that was launched in its wake. It was an important moment in resetting and reconfiguring for international and Muslim public opinion what happened then and has happened since. It is also perhaps the most damning indictment of all for the Bush presidency that in 2009 such a reiteration by an American president is so necessary.

4. Finally a President Who Can Talk to Palestinians

Obama’s words on the Palestinian situation were not remarkable for his advocacy of a two-state solution, his mentioning of Palestine, or his opposition to the settlements. All of that we have heard before, and in fact, the speech gave precious little by way of actually articulating a plan for Palestinian de-occupation and statehood. But that was also its strength.

The idea of a Palestinian state, even before it exists, has lost much of its luster and appeal for Palestinians precisely because American and Israeli leaders talked about statehood as a technical fix for a Palestinian problem, in exclusively economic, governance, and security terms. In so doing, they ignored or demeaned and denied the Palestinian narrative and made the whole arrangement sound rather unappetizing.

Today, President Obama began to redress that. PA capacity and economic opportunities were something of a footnote. And thankfully, the building of Palestinian security forces was not even mentioned.

Instead Obama spoke a language that actual Palestinians could relate to, recalling the 60-year “pain of dislocation,” the “wait in refugee camps” (without in the same breath emasculating the refugees of any rights). He spoke of humiliation, occupation, and an intolerable situation – in other words, Palestinian daily reality. Only after recognizing the Palestinian experience did he chart the course for achieving “the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity,” namely, via a Palestinian state. This shift in discourse may be lost on most American ears, not so for Palestinians and in the Arab and Muslim world, and it begins to give Obama a moral authority that will allow him to address this issue in speaking directly to the Palestinian people above the heads of their divided leadership.

5. Shimon Peres Could Not Have Done a Better Job

In what is becoming classical Obama, he at the same time presented perhaps the most compelling justification and explanation of Israel’s rights and its existence ever spoken in an Arab and Muslim capital. No Israeli has ever done a better job, he is a true friend. In the most unequivocal of terms and in a speech that so captured Muslim world attention, Obama placed the notions of threatening Israel’s destruction, stereotypes of Jews, and Holocaust denial, as being irredeemably beyond the pale and unacceptable. And he reaffirmed America’s “unbreakable bond with Israel.”

Tellingly, if unsurprisingly, it is these messages that are leading the Israeli news coverage of the speech. While the government of Benjamin Netanyahu may be squirming in discomfort at Obama’s reasoned and repeated calls for a settlement freeze, for reopening Gaza, and for Palestinian statehood, the Israeli public will, I think, be both reassured and keen to believe in the hope for change and a better future for them also.

 One imagines too that the day is not so far off for an honest, empathetic, and home-truths Obama speech to Israel and the Jewish world. Expect that speech to be not only well-received but also to bring us dramatically closer to finally ending the Arab-Israeli conflict and achieving that two-state solution. Obama’s use of the phrase, “align American policies with those who pursue peace,” will also be noted in Jerusalem. Finally, by referring to “Jewish homeland” rather than a Jewish state, Obama, I think, studiously avoided giving succor to the slew of racist laws being presented in the new Israeli Knesset.

6. Policy Details – More Auto-Pilot Than Reset.

In a speech that I genuinely think carries game-changing potential for so many issues that America and the Muslim world are caught up in, there was virtually nothing new in detailed policy terms. That is very probably due to the nature of the speech, and the detailed policy changes might follow in the coming months. But if they don’t, Cairo will go down as a moment of unrequited promise and opportunity.

On Israel-Palestine, we dusted off the Road Map (yet again), a Bush relic that should have long ago been filed in the trash can, and the Afghanistan and Iraq plans still do not sound too convincing. It’s unclear how even Obama’s more sophisticated version of democratization will be advanced with America’s staunchest and most democracy-resistant allies, and the way forward with Iran remains opaque. Noteworthy, too, was that in a speech stating that America has no designs on maintaining military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the continued American military footprint elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world was not touched upon.

7. Hosni Mubarak and the Perils of Playing Host

 Egypt’s rulers would no doubt have been mortified had this speech taken place anywhere else in the Arab or Muslim world. There is an understandable Egyptian sense of pride in their history and sense of longing to still be considered the region’s leading power. Having landed those hosting rights, Mubarak’s regime today had to live with the consequences. Obama spoke to his audience and to the Egyptian people, and in an interesting break from past practice, his presidential host Mr. Mubarak was not even mentioned let alone lavished with praise. It will not go unnoticed.

Obama did mention Egypt’s Christian Coptic minority and of course spoke to human rights and people choosing their own governments to loud applause. So much for all the neocon bleating before the speech about Obama being a valueless realist ready to sell freedom-spirited Egyptians down the river. I was not there, but a sense of being empowered almost seemed to echo around the room at Cairo University and well beyond, and it might have major implications for Egypt and the region that will be played out in the coming years.

And finally, we have an American president who avoided the Pavlovian repetition of how American support for the Egyptian regime is so linked to Egypt’s historic peace with Israel. The way that linkage has played out – that America goes soft of non-democratic tendencies in the Arab world as long as they are pro-Israel – has done a great disservice to the public perception of not only peace but also of America and even Israel.

8. More Hand Less Fist on Iran

There was even some encouragement for Obama’s Iran policy in today’s speech. It was beginning to look disturbingly like the Obama administration would be brandishing the stick of sanctions in one hand and the stopwatch of deadlines in the other, thereby leaving no hand free to shake any prospective Iranian unclenched fist.  Obama moved beyond that. Many will point to his acknowledgement of history: “The United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government,” as being the money line.  It’s true that is a big deal and goes further than what was said in his Norouz message. However, I think this was more important, if not entirely new: “any nation- including Iran – should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the NPT.”

The president also had this intriguing chestnut to share on nuclear nonproliferation: “I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not.” Now I may be a bit Israelocentric in how I look at the world but this sounds like a not too subtle hint to me. Might this be a kind of “yes – we acknowledge there is a double standard here regarding the Israeli nuclear issue, and eventually we will get to that too.” It won’t be a headline, Israel will officially ignore it, and when asked Obama’s spokespeople will obfuscate but in more than a few capitals, including Jerusalem, a parsing industry will grow up around those few words.

9. Giving a Finger to the Purple Finger Theory of Democratization

Obama did it. He reclaimed the democratization agenda by placing it in a broader context as a set of rights and freedoms, and by going on to address religious pluralism, women’s rights, and the challenge of adapting economic development and modernity to traditional values. To be honest, it’s not a particularly difficult one to pull off, but to give him his fair dues, Barack Obama does do it better than anyone else. And there’s something of a new policy here, timely with the Lebanese election elections next week: “…we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments - provided they govern with respect for all their people.”

The genius was in the pivot. Obama respected Islamic tradition and religious piety, and for instance, a woman’s right to wear the hijab, and he then pivoted that into a broader discussion of the values of female education and women’s rights, placing those things in seamless harmony rather than in contradiction. After an American president who was perceived as doing so much to sow division in the Muslim world, one of Obama’s most powerful lines was undoubtedly, “fault-lines must be closed among Muslims… the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence,” and all this couched in a constant appeal to young people.

10. And He Was Also Speaking to the American Public

After years of fear-mongering, Islamofascist awareness weeks on campuses, and tens of millions of copies of the vile “Obsession” DVD appearing in newspapers and mailboxes, yet another, no less important, reset button was pressed today. The president will no doubt be accused of apologetics and moral relativism, but he decided to face this head-on, to go to Cairo, speak with respect and honesty to the Muslim world, and to do what was best for America’s national security interests.

In so doing, he was also broadcasting a message back home. Most American Muslims will no doubt be feeling a great sense of pride and inspiration from this speech. The rest of America was given a timely and even touching reminder of the contributions that American Muslims have made to this country and that Muslims have given the world in general. Oh, and there might have even been a little message in there upping the ante, for Congress and even for his own party–“I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.”

———————

Daniel Levy is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative at The Century Foundation and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation.

During the Barak Government, he worked in the Prime Minister’s Office as special adviser and head of the Jerusalem Affairs unit under Minister Haim Ramon. He also worked as senior policy adviser to former Israeli Minister of Justice, Yossi Beilin. He was a member of the official Israeli delegation to the Taba negotiations with the Palestinians in January 2001, and previously served on the negotiating team to the “Oslo B” Agreement from May to September 1995, under Prime Minister Rabin. In 2003, he worked as an analyst for the International Crisis Group Middle East Program. Daniel was the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative and prior to joining The Century Foundation and New America Foundation was directing policy planning and international relations at the Geneva Campaign Headquarters in Tel Aviv.

Brought to our attention by Franny Armstrong   two plays about climate change on at the Bush theatre in London

 http://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/production/…

 http://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/index.php

Performance Times - Mon-Sat 7.30. Sat Mat 2.30. Please note that you will only be able to see one play a night, except on Saturdays when the plays run consecutively at 2.30pm and 7.30pm.

On the Beach performances - 11, 12, 18, 19, 25, 26 May & 1, 2, 3 June 7:30pm

On the Beach matinees - 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 May & 6 June 2.30pm & 5, 6 May 4.30pm

Resilience performances - 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30 May & 4, 5, 6 June 7.30pm

Reviews: By Steve Waters ***** Evening Standard **** Guardian **** Sunday Times **** Telegraph **** Independent **** Financial Times **** Time Out

THE CONTINGENCY PLAN is a double bill of plays from the frontline of climate change. They both stand alone and are complementary. Together, they present an epic portrait of an England of the near future, in which huge flooding has destroyed Bristol and threatens to sink the east coast.

- ON THE BEACH
Thirty years ago, Robin Paxton silenced his radical thinking on climate change and with his wife Jenny withdrew from public life to their home on the Norfolk coast. Now, Robin’s son Will, a glaciologist, has taken on his father’s work. He returns from months in the Antarctic to tell his parents he will take up a role within government. Yet behind the happy reunion with his father, lies thirty years of secrecy and bitterness. As the truth surfaces, the family is torn apart, and Robin and Jenny must face the rising tide alone.

- RESILIENCE
A Tory government has just come to power and wants radical answers to the imminent floods. Two new ministers, a true-blue Tory and a member of the Notting Hill set, try to outmenoeuvre and undermine each other. When the chief Civil Servant brings maverick glaciologist Will Paxton into the meeting, he puts an extreme scenario on the table: England, from the coastline to its capital, faces catastrophe.

Read all reviews

‘A triumph…some of the very finest dramatic components London has seen this year: sophisticated writing, slick direction and superlative acting.’
FIVE STARS
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard
‘A stunning theatrical knock-out.’
FOUR STARS
Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph

Can The US Be Reborn Only When President Obama Finally Decides To Drop The Dollar In The Favor Of The Sollar? Really - is there any other way out from the excesses he inherited and does not seem to figure out how to stop?

The following are some ideas that came to my mind during the intermission at a Saturday morning duo-piano concert at the Tsavta Club in Tel Aviv. And it happened as we describe now:

First, the City of Tel Aviv starts its 100 years’ birthday April 4th. Seemingly part of the present year’s retrospective, Adi Etzion-Zak acts in a monodrama on Juli Herzl, the wife of visionary Theodore Herzl who saw in his mind the creation of Tel Aviv.

I went to see Adi Etzion’s performance on Tuesday, met her husband - Tel Aviv University Music-Professor and pianist Jonathan Zak, and Saturday went to hear his performance in a duo-piano concert where he played together with a Russian-Israeli virtuoso Irene Friedland in a repertoire that included Bach, Chopin, List, Mozart, and a Grainger fantasy on Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.”

At intermission I looked at a gentleman viewing seriously two paintings that were part of an exhibit in the foyer. I saw those paintings already on Tuesday - they were done in a very similar style - one showing the profile of a goat and the other in a very similar setting some bottles. I decided to ask the gentleman what he saw there. He saw the similarity in style, but his wife said immediately - the goat and the milk - she even saw in some squares underneath - the cheese.

Very nice, we started to talk and I said I live in New York, and he said that he lived in New York for a year when he sold a company and had to be in New York for the transfer of the know-how. I understood that this was probably one of the famous Israeli high-tech masters, and we continued on the economy.

He clearly was perplexed at why President Obama picked Mr. Geithner for the treasury. Clearly change is needed here and Geithner is more of the same. The Gentleman thought that a Joe Stiglitz, a George Soros, or someone in one of the ways of one these two very different, but clearly very deep insight examples, is what is needed in order to change things that should not be allowed to continue in ways of the past. We agreed that throwing another trillion dollars on the heap of waste as represented by the economists that brought the US to its knees, does not make sense at all - and will not lead to positive results. His point was that indexed bonds should be considered safe but did not improve either lately - so there is something really very basic that is wrong.

The gentleman was not a theorist - he plainly confessed that he is an interested party because he is invested in this economy.

As anyone reading our website knows - his words were very much in line with what we kept writing for years. I ventured to tell him that the trillion dollars are really not relevant because they are not real money anyway - they are the equivalent of the old running-presses - or plain paper. His answer was that this brings down the dollar to nothing - and my answer was that this is just the point - the dollar is already at nothing because of our excesses - and our point is that we must start using other things then oil - this because we already transferred all real dollars to the oil exporting countries. He looked obviously worried - and now I get to the real point of my writing this column.

It just occurred to me there - that throwing around dollars to the point of making its value irrelevant - leads us to what happened in Brazil, we can rather restart by renaming the currency and starting out with a totally new currency, leaving some of the old currency rot and thus making some of the old profeteers into the new losers. Not so bad if the oil exporters and other currency holders just lose what we stupidly transferred to them in our insistence in hurting ourselves. Further, true to ourselves, I just thought up that the SOLLAR would be a good replacement for the DOLLAR. When the gentleman reacted that this is total destruction - I protested that this is actually the way to rebirth. WE START FROM SCRATCH.

Obviously, at this point the gentleman had enough of me and said he is returning to the music, and I on the other hand was so full with myself that I could not wait to get back to the computer and write this up.

I hope that someone of our readers brings these exchanges to the attention to real White-House insiders and let us flesh these raw ideas out so that they can be looked at for what they are worth.

We think clearly that radical change will come one way or another - when it is obvious to Congress that a Geithner way, or any other Goldman-Sachs way, is not the way in the post-carbon economy. We did not take the situation seriously when we could have acted logically - we advanced in the direction of turning ourselves into “The Age of Stupid” and for reasons that have nothing to do with needs of real efforts to dig us out from under the mountain of missteps, we still did not advance an inch towards the goal of radical change. SO, HERE WE SUGGEST THE RADICAL CHANGE - IT IS THE START FROM SCRATCH IDEA, AND THE INTRODUCTION OF THE SOLLAR CURRENCY to replace the depleted Dollar currency.

Our mind continues to work and begs for your inputs also. Once gold and silver were the backing of a a hard currency - we suggest that the amount of available solar energy used - be the natural resource that logically backs this new country currency.

THE AGE OF STUPID - the March 15, 2009 Premiere held simultaneously in a special solar tent on the grass of Leicester Square, London, and in many movie houses all over the UK. The producers asked people to go to the theaters in their areas and not to fly to London. The facts are that air-transport is the largest CO2 emitter and thus a very serious contributer to global warming. The movie is about global warming as seen backwards from a point in time - 2050 - from an observatory that was built so people later can have a way to see what life was before the global warming catastrophe struck and ask themselves - did we have to be that stupid? Did we really not see what we were doing to the planet and thus to ourselves? But we did know! So we were that Stupid! Unbelievably Stupid!!

The point is that this movie should turn its viewers into activists - so we do change our ways because we do understand that we cannot have an uncontrolled growth and live as if we hadten planets to our disposal when we indeed have only one. There is still time to change our ways and the target time that Franny Armstrong (writer and Director) Lizzie G (excuse me, I do not have the full name in front of me)(sound), and Pete Poslethwaite (main performer and activist) see - is December 6, 2009 - the start of the Copenhagen meeting on climate change which they love to note as CO2penhagen. Pete Poslethwaite feels so strong about all this that he threatened on camera that he will return his OBE if the UK Government insists on going ahead with the controversial Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent - his original area.

The movie team has already spun off a “vote with your feet to stop climate chaosmovement” www.stopclimatechaos.org that is working on a December 5, 2009 “March in December” - London - mass rally - with “Protect the Poorest” Quit Dirty Coal” “Act Fair & Fast” banners.

I came to London from New York, in a stop-over while timing myself to do so as part of a larger trip to Tel Aviv. This gave me the excuse to fly-in even though I understood the request that creating CO2 while being against it - is indeed a misrepresentation of policy.

I saw the action while at a VUE movie house in Acton, London, where all activity from the solar tent in Leicester Square was being beamed in.

I write this from my hotel, after having returned there by way of the “tube” - the famed London Subway. In the tube I had the chance to rview what we saw with 5 young Britishers. My method was “rapid fire” - I wanted to know why Minister Miliband had on a purple tie. I understood he stands for dirty technologies. He seems to love nuclear power without going into actual details if it saves, and how much, of CO2 emissions, and what do you do with radioactive byproducts? OK - that is interests policy - but why in the UK a purple tie? He seems also to love coal - albeight - he thinks in terms of clean coal or the hiding away somehow of the CO2. Franny Armstrong was not too kind to him and what she called his”cohorts” - read the UK government. Pete Posllethwaite said that “we told Tony Blair” not to go to Iraq - but he did” seemingly we tell now the government to do something about climate change but they do not. But why the purple tie? One of the Britisher ladies said it is the fashion now but perhaps Miliband wants to say he is independent. Aha! now we got a clue. It was the Red Republicans of Bush / Cheney that led Tony Blair into Iraq, but now it is the Blue Democrats that lead Obama to undo what the others did and do something where the others did nothing. So is Britisher Miliband signaling that British Labor is now only half-way in cahoots, because the cohorts still wink to the rear - that is to the American Republicans - and insist on not lining up with progressive forces that intend to march on CO2penhagen?

I asked my British co-travelers; what about Cameron? He is a ”Greenwash” they said. Aha, so Miliband is purple - the color that desribes one as in-between the Republicans and the Democrats in the US, while, he - a Britisher of Labor - has really only Greenwash on his right and on his left. So the purple is that he really wants to say something but has little to line up with on the Islands - so he looks outside but does not want to look Eastwards to Europe - so he looks westwards to the US.

This position is somehow strangely clear to us at www.SustainabiliTank.info where we believe that led by the Bush lack of interest in Climate Change, and the Arab Oil States strong opposition to the subject, the UN undid the Poznan 2008 meeting with the purpose of turning Copenhagen 2009 into Poznan II rather then what some thought will be a Kyoto II formula, but many of us thought more realistically into a potential new Copenhagen I solution. Even so, I completely agreee with Franny and Pete that “THE AGE OF STUPID” must turn our heads around so we undoo that evolution and force the issue so that we will become the GENERATION THAT WAS NOT STUPID. That future does not belong to the PURPLE but to the GREEN. Purple in fashion is a catastrophe of global proportions - Green should be our color - by law and by good business practices. The US needs a Stiglitz in Treasury and not a Goldman-Sachs Man. The UK needs something similar and the Germans and French may indeed help illuminate the way by saying that blind stimuli are poison to the interests of turning away from being stupid. What is rather needed are regulations that smooth the way to being not stupid - and the timing of “The Age of STUPID” happens to be so that it is right before the UK meeting of the G-20 under Gordon Brown’s leadership. Did not President Obama just say so to Gordon Brown - that there is a special US-UK relationship? OK - will now Mr. Brown steer things so that he brings to a realignment of policy between the Merkel-Sarkozy line approach to capitalism and the old coservative way of doing business as seen by the UK-US camp?

The movie was great. The points well presented - the melting glaciers, the destried beaches, the burning cities, the spoils of oil that are not money for the needy - but destruction and poverty - that is all there and more. The Indian entrepreneur who wants to turn a billion people into air travelers is just a good student of Harvard a Wharton - but he is also the “angel of death” not just for India but for all of us. Ah, Yes, I took pictures and a book of notes - these will be used in the future - now I just want to say - GO SEE THE MOVIE WHENEVER IT TURNS UP IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD. Don’t travel to see it - but make your leaders see to it that it is shown to your people.

The Maldive Islands announced - for The Age of Stupid Premiere - that they will be the first UN State to be Carbon Neutral - they understand because they are allready going under water - right now!

Best regards to Franny, Lizzie, and Pete, from Pincas Jawetz at www.SustainabiliTank.info

TODAY’S PRESS

The Scotsman: “ingenuity, quick-thinking and sheer nous”
 http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features…

Radio 5 Live: I’ll be blabbing on at about 9.15pm tonight

Most viewed item on Microsoft Network (!!): http://environment.uk.msn.com/climate-ch…

Front cover of the local Camden rag: http://www.thecnj.com/review/2009/031209…

See you all tomorrow,
Franny

The Solar Tent at Leicester Square as per “The Age of Stupid” e-mail.

Stupid on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ageofstupid & http://twitter.com/notstupid

Stupid on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Age-of…

Donate to the Not Stupid campaign: http://www.ageofstupid.net/donate _______________________________________________
Age-of-Stupid mailing list   Age-of-Stupid at talk.torchbox.com

From:        kimo at iisd.org
Subject:     Climate Change Mitigation: Tapping the Potential of Agriculture
Date:          March 12, 2009

IISD Reporting Services has published a guest article, “Climate Change Mitigation: Tapping the Potential of Agriculture” by Alexander Mueller, Wendy Mann and Leslie Lipper of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in the most recent issue of “MEA Bulletin.”

The article can be found at http://www.iisd.ca/mea-l/guestarticle65…. and the entire issue of MEA Bulletin can be downloaded at http://www.iisd.ca/mea-l/meabulletin65.p…

———————————————————————-
Langston James “Kimo” Goree VI
Director, IISD Reporting Services
International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) — United Nations Office
300 E 56th St. Apt. 11A - New York, NY 10022
IISDRS Office phone: +1 646 536 7556 Direct Line: +1 973 273 5860
Fax: +1 646 219-0955 Mobile phone/SMS: +19172934781
Blog: http://www.kimogoree.com Skype, Twitter and Brightkite: kimogoree
Email:  kimo at iisd.org MS Messenger:  kimo at iisd.org
Where: The Hague 13-14 March, Istanbul 15-18, Seoul 19-20

Love in a warming climate. In a Glasgow Theatre Opens a Play Called Kyoto.
By Steve Cramer, The Financial Times,  March 12 2009.
This second of a planned trilogy of two-handed love stories from David Greig is an altogether darker piece than last autumn’s engaging trifle with music, Midsummer . Here, a timely reminder about the ecological catastrophe that has been knocked off the front pages by the economic one is proposed through the metaphor of a too often forestalled love affair.

In it, we meet Dan (Matthew Pidgeon), who might be a civil servant or a representative of a mighty corporation. Whatever his role, it’s clearly opposed to Lucy’s (Vicki Liddelle), a researcher in climate change who has spent much of her time on the ever-diminishing polar ice caps. For all their ostensible ideological differences, an ancient, lurking passion first discovered at the summit of the title a decade before, but as yet unconsummated, lies between them. As they enter his hotel room, in some undesignated former Eastern Bloc country, darkened and chilled by a power cut that might foreshadow a future reality for the west, will they finally explore long-deferred emotions?

Dominic Hill’s lunchtime production for Oran Mor and the Traverse makes the most of its metaphor, but leaves one wondering whether clothing the issues it raises in allegory is strictly necessary. Just as each of the two lovers has long since recognised their crush, so too have all but a handful of Free Market Taliban clustered round the former US president acknowledged the issue of climate change without acting. As the lovers wonder whether it’s too late, so must we.

“The world is in the bar, drinking to forget,” comments Liddelle’s scientist of the rest of the international delegation at the conference. It’s an extension of the metaphor, but to the point where one wishes to see the delegates, however plastered, actually make their case. At times, indeed, one feels that this tryst, whatever its erotic potential, is missing the party outside.

That said, Greig’s script has some witty moments, backed with sharp performances. Pidgeon replaces his feckless but endearing leading man from Midsummer with a character full of niggling, fastidious propriety, whose desire for consumerist perfection is such that he imperils the simple primal joy at hand with an obsessive search for the champagne and smoked salmon that will make it perfect. Liddelle, in the more difficult part of the commonsensical rationalist, is perhaps even stronger.

LEICESTER SQUARE PREMIERE - SEE OUR SPONSORS HERE

Roll out the green carpet… welcome to THE PEOPLE’S PREMIERE
Your average run-of-the-mill movie premiere is a glitzy, exclusive, affair – only the stars are allowed in.

But The Age of Stupid is not your average run-of-the-mill film. It was financed by hundreds of different groups and individuals using our cunning crowd-funding model, and in many ways, we all star in it: we’re the self-destructive anti-heroes who are emitting all the greenhouse gases.

So we’re hosting the world’s first INclusive launch – the People’s Premiere.

Put this date in your diary, because this is the night we’ll be making film history: the 15th March 2009.

This eye-wateringly cutting-edge film extravaganza will feature a simultaneous launch at 64 different cinemas across the U.K.. We’re now expecting so many people - circa 16,000 (!) - that the Guinness Book of Records will hopefully soon confirm The Age of Stupid as the largest ever film premiere in history. Screening venues from Plymouth to Inverness, via The Eden Project, and a solar-powered cinema tent pitched in Leicester Square as the jewel in the crown will all be taking part in this unique event.

The People’s Premiere will also be the world’s first truly, 100% eco-friendly film premiere, with a mind-boggling array of genuinely green measures – not greenwash – to make sure we emit sod-all in the process:
FULL ECO AUDIT OF EMISSIONS FROM THE EVENT

SOLAR POWERED PROJECTOR

PEDAL POWERED POPCORN MAKING MACHINE

USED COFFEE BEAN SACKS RECYCLED AS TRENDY FENCE COVERS

RE-USED AND REUSABLE GREEN CARPET

BICYCLES AND ELECTRIC VEHICLES FOR OTHER CELEBS, CHARGED FROM RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES

BIODIESEL FOR OTHER VEHICLES, MADE FROM RECYCLED COOKING OIL COLLECTED BY VOLUNTEERS FROM FRIENDLY LOCAL CHIP SHOPS

ORGANIC CHOCOLATE, BEER AND SOFT DRINKS

NO BOTTLED WATER, DISPOSABLE CUPS OR OTHER CRAP LIKE THAT

NO FLYING! AND NO OFFSETTING. OFFSETTING IS PALPABLE NONSENSE

CHECK OUT OUR FULL ECO CREDENTIALS HERE

Click on a cinema below to book tickets,read about the local speakers or send email alerts to friends who live nearby

From:    thenewyorksynagogue at thenewyorksynagog…
Subject: Join Us Tomorrow for Sholem Aleichem’s 150th Birthday Celebration
Date: March 6, 2009

The Year Of Sholom Aleichem - His 150th Birthday.
March 4, 2009, The Jewish Week,
by Jonathan Mark, Associate Editor

In a Bronx winter, Sholom Aleichem turned 57 on March 2, 1916, eroded by tuberculosis, his prostate, diabetes and a broken heart - his son Misha had recently died in Europe after being denied entry at Ellis Island. His daughter was in Odessa. His “republic,” as he once laughingly called his large family, was scattered around this world and the Other World, let alone divided by the Great War’s trenches.

He could hear the elevated subway screech and rumble on Westchester Avenue as it entered and left the Intervale Avenue station, down the block from his Kelly Street walkup. Not long before, while on a speaking tour in Russia, he collapsed in Baranovich, was bedridden for weeks and his “beloved readers” spread straw on the street beneath his window so his sleep wouldn’t be disturbed by the clip-clop of horses over the cobblestones. There wasn’t enough straw in the Bronx to soften his landing. Life was grim and closing in. He was nearly broke, losing his wife’s inheritance in the Kiev stock market, losing money from publishers and theatrical producers who got the better of him, losing touch with so many of his readers behind the war’s eastern front.

He had two months to live. He wrote his own epitaph: “Here lies a plain man who wrote in plain Yiddish … And while the whole world was merry, and saw in him but gladness, poor man, he suffered on the quiet. God knows, but no one else did.”

The New York Times reported that more than 100,000 of his readers lined the streets for his funeral with “a crush that threatened to develop into a stampede,” to say goodbye. They loved him, and they knew he loved them back.

If his last days were sad, his afterlife has been splendid. His name is associated with a twinkle; “Fiddler On The Roof” cemented his fame, bringing new readers to new translations. This month, his 150th birthday, there were celebrations in Tel Aviv. Limmud FSU launched “The Year of Sholom Aleichem,” with young Kiev activists visiting his Pereyaslav birthplace. Ukraine opened a Sholom Aleichem museum and issued a stamp, a coin and a cultural prize in his name.

A Ukrainian television crew flew to New York to cover events here: A Sholom Aleichem Shabbat (March 7) at the New York Synagogue on East 58th Street, featuring Sholom Aleichem’s granddaughter Bel Kaufman(a writer herself, most famously for “Up The Down Staircase,”) and a celebration at the Players Club, later that evening, with Kaufman, Theodore Bikel, “Fiddler” composer Sheldon Harnick and author Pete Hamill. Penguin Classics released a new translation of the Tevye and Motl stories, and Viking released a new edition of “Wandering Stars,” his novel about a Yiddish theater troupe, with a foreword by Tony Kushner, author of “Angels in America.”

But let’s return to an Odessa long ago, when little Bel Kaufman would get letters with a Bronx postmark: “Dear Belichka, I am writing you to ask you to hurry and grow up so you can learn to write, and write me letters. In order to grow up it is necessary to drink milk, have your soup and vegetables, and fewer candies. Regards to your dolls. Your papa, Sholom Aleichem, who loves you very much.”

Then came a three-word cable in English. Chaim Nachman Bialik, Kaufman’s neighbor in Odessa, came over to translate: “Papa very sick.”

“I’m almost 98,” says Kaufman today, “the only descendant of Sholom Aleichem who knew him, because I’m so old.”

She was separated from him, in his final years, and didn’t see her grandmother Hodel (Olga), for several years more because of war and revolution. She last saw her Papa when she was 3, vacationing with her cousin Tamar in Bavaria.

“He had a little goatee,” Bel recalls, “and velvet vests. He had blonde hair, longish in the style of the time. And he had pince-nez glasses at the end of a black ribbon. He was very happy, so youthful and full of fun.

“He adored us.” As they walked he’d say, “The harder you hold my hand, the better I write!” Bel squeezed tighter. “Do you see that mountain? I just gave it to Tamarichka. Do you see this lake? I’m making a present of it to Belichka.”

They walked through a zoo, stopping in front of a monkey on a branch. “Papa takes a piece of paper, folds it into a cone, fills it with water from a nearby fountain, and lifts it up so the monkey can drink. The monkey refuses. Papa bends down to me, and I can still hear his voice: ‘Belichka, it’s a spoiled monkey.’ Papa refills the paper cone and drank and drank, very thirstily. Only later did I realize he was suffering from diabetes. But even about that he’d joke, ‘At least I know I won’t die of hunger. I’ll die of thirst.”

“The German landlady made us lovely dinners,” remembers Bel. Then war was declared. “No more lovely dinners. We had to escape,” she to Odessa, he to New York.

When “Fiddler” opened in 1964, The New York Times asked Isaac Bashevis Singer to explain Sholom Aleichem to a burgeoning audience. Singer, who could be acidic about other writers, responded with reverence: “Can a folk writer be a genius, and can a genius think and feel just like an average man? If such a phenomenon is possible, Sholom Aleichem is its closest approximation.”

He loved everyone and everything Jewish. Even when he became less religiously observant as he grew older, he never stopped writing stories about the exhilaration of the holidays and their seasons.

He was fiercely against intermarriage, saying that his children could have “whatever religious convictions they will, but I beg of them to guard their Jewish descent.” If they didn’t, he would disown. He had Tevye say of his intermarried child, Chava, “She is no longer my daughter. She died long ago.”

And yet, in a story written less than two years before he died, Sholom Aleichem had Tevya and Chava reconcile. He had Tevye address Sholom Aleichem himself: “Please don’t think badly of me that tears come to my eyes when I remember this … After all, she was still my child … How can a person be so harsh when God says of Himself that is an all-forgiving God? … What do you say, Sholom Aleichem? You’re a Jew who writes books and gives advice to everybody. Tell me, what should Tevye have done?

“Goodbye,” says Tevye to Sholom Aleichem, “be well, and forgive me for filling your head with so many words. It will give you something to write about.”

Reverend Billy - BILL TALEN is REVEREND BILLY
the 30+ Voice Life After Shopping Gospel Choir  and the extraordinary Not Buying It Band.

“The most pointed and courageous political theatre in New York.” - The New York Times
“He’s Elmer Gantry plus Michael Moore.” - The Wall Street Journal

New York City IS Immigrants

@ Highline Ballroom
431 W 16th St. bet. 9th and 10th Aves. in Manhattan
2 PM Show Sunday March 8, 2009
Doors open at 1:00PM
All Ages. Lunch and Spirits Served
Take the A,C,E or the L Train to 8th Ave and 14th Street
Tickets $12.00
NOTE: FREE ADMISSION FOR YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS IF YOU EMAIL RICK BY 3PM SATURDAY 3/7/09! Email:  RickUlfik at WeTheWorld.org with: Your Last Name, First Name, # of people in your party
More info at http://www.revbilly.com

Dear Friends,

Rev Sez: This is our first Fabulous Worship since we changed our name from “Stop Shopping Church” to the “Life After Shopping” Church. We feel like America did stop shopping, and now we want to start our shopping over - locally, organically, Fair Trade and Sweatfree. So the retail bubble burst, and now its “Life After… “

New York City IS immigrants. That is what we are. We are neighborhoods of immigrants. We are here for many reasons, but one of them is the freedom promised by the Statue of Liberty and assured us by the U. S. Constitution. Our neighbors’ lives have been commodified. Their imprisonment - if the immigration police determine their papers aren’t right - makes private companies money. The for-profit prisons have a motive for keeping people inside, and the scandal of how people are treated there is ongoing.

Rick Sez: This Sunday, if you or your friends are in NYC please join us for another high energy, rabble rousing show. You’ll hear plenty of singin’ and testifyin’ with Rev. Billy’s irreverent but insightful unique blend of social issues/politics, theater, humor and great gospel music. As “Church Organist” I can tell you that the 30+ member Gospel Choir and band get better all the time!

Rick Ulfik
Founder and Board Chair
We, The World
 RickUlfik at WeTheWorld.org

Reverend Billy
and the Church of Life After Shopping
“His collar is fake but his calling is real.”
- Alisa Solomon, Village Voice

DIRECTED BY SAVITRI DURKEE

DIRECTOR AND CHOREOGRAPHER OF THE
STOP SHOPPING GOSPEL CHOIR
James Solomon Benn

MUSICIANS:
E. Katrina Lewis (Piano/keyboards), Rick Ulfik (Piano/keyboards), Nate Stevens (Bass), Eric Johnson (Drums) + Alternates Leon Gruenbaum (keyboards) & Miles Kennedy (Drums)

BILL TALEN is REVEREND BILLY

Or at the following mailing address:
We, The World
211 East 43rd Street, Suite 710
New York, NY, 10017
USA

Elisabeth Lohninger is an Austrian living now in New York, fascinated with Brazilian music, she manages to create sounds all her own mixing in Austrian folk tunes.

The March 22, 2009 concert at the Blue Note is her second Austrian Cultural Center of New York recommended event.

The following album - released in 2006 - is “the only way out is up.”

From: Jazz Promo Services
Press Contact: Jim Eigo,  jazzpromo at earthlink.net

Elisabeth Lohninger at Blue Note, NYC

Special Guests: Donny McCaslin (sax), Max Pollak (tap dance/body percussion)

Sunday, March 22nd

Sets: 12:30pm and 2:30pm

Cover: $24.50 (includes Brunch, the show and a drink)

with:

Walter Fischbacher, piano

Evan Gregor, bass

Jordan Perlson, drums

Blue Note Jazz Club

131 W. 3rd St

New York, NY 10012

212-475-8592

 http://www.bluenote.net/

 http://www.lohninger.net
 http://www.myspace.com/lohninger

Hailing from Austria, and now residing in New York City, Elisabeth Lohninger’s distinctive, alto jazz sound pays homage to the ephemeral nature of love as well as the mystery of waking up each day - life at its core.  Her seven successful albums, from her debut project in 1998, Austrian LiedGood to her current multi-facet project, TrioNada weave the influences of EST, Bobby McFerrin, Sarah Vaughan, Sting and Joni Mitchell into an original tapestry of word and music.

“…a significant jazz singer!”
M. P. Gladstone, AAJ

“When I include a vocalist on my programs, it’s only because I hear a hell of a singer and I want to share that experience. That Elisabeth Lohninger is such a singer was obvious to me from the first time I heard her. Actually, I don’t think of Elisabeth Lohninger as a singer at all, but rather a musician, an artist, a poet who sings.”
Bob Rogers
Program Host
WSHA-Raleigh/WWOZ-New Orleans

“The Only Way Out is Up is the best independent vocal jazz recording I have heard this year, and it may very well outlast the big-label offerings.”
C. Michael Bailey, AAJ

Sunday | November 2, 2008

9:30p, $20
Elisabeth Lohninger and Trionada (A/USA)
Elisabeth Lohninger, Vocals
Max Pollak, Tap dance, body percussion
Tim Collins, Vibraphone, marimba

Please note that these concerts take place at the JAZZ STANDARD.

From: Franny Armstrong <franny@spannerfilms.net>
Date: February 24, 2009

Subject: [Age-of-Stupid] Everyone invited to “The Age of Stupid” premiere on March 15

Hello

Please forward the attached eflyer and/or press release.

If the attachments don’t work, they’re also on the website: www.ageofstupid.net

Thanks v much,
Team Stupid
 http://www.ageofstupid.net/team_stupid

Oli the genius cinema-booker has confirmed that The People’s Premiere will be in Aberdeen, Bath, Birmingham, Blackburn, Braehead, Bristol, Bury, Cambridge, Cardiff, Carlisle, Cheshire,Clones, Cornwall (Eden Project), Croydon, Edinburgh, Enniskillen, Exeter, Glasgow, Guilford, Harrow, Hartlepool, Hatfield, Hull, Inverness, Kingston, Leeds, Leicester, Lincoln, Liverpool, Livingston, London (8 locations), Maidenhead, Manchester, Milford Haven, Naul, Newcastle, Newcastle West, Norwich, Oxford, Plymouth, Portlaoise, Portsmouth, Preston, Reading, Romford, Scunthorpe, Southport, Staines, Swindon, Tinahely, Tunbridge Wells, Watford, Wigan and York.

DOWNLOAD the press release: stupid_peoples_premiere.pdf

Stupid on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ageofstupid & http://twitter.com/notstupid

Stupid on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Age-of…

Donate to the Not Stupid campaign: http://www.ageofstupid.net/donate _______________________________________________
Age-of-Stupid mailing list
 Age-of-Stupid at talk.torchbox.com

A note from Shashi Tharoor:

“Several of you have written to me asking for my views on the film Slumdog Millionaire. Since the film is topical, and many of you clearly didn’t read my take on it the first time, I am re-sending my Times of India column of November 23, 2008.”

Gritty portrait of real India on reel
By Shashi Tharoor
Weekly Column “Shashi on Sunday” in “The Times of India”
November 23, 2008

Movies made by westerners about India have rarely been worth writing home about, ranging as they’ve done from the appallingly ignorant racism of Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to David Lean’s well-intentioned but cringe-making Passage to India, with Alec Guinness in brown face and dhoti, warbling away as Professor Godbole. But once in a while an exception comes along that makes up for the lot of them. I’ve just seen Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Trainspotting’s Danny Boyle from a script by The Full Monty’s Simon Beaufoy, based on the page-turning novel Q & A by diplomat Vikas Swarup. Exuberant, exciting, gaudy and gritty in a way that can only be called Dickensian, Slumdog Millionaire brings contemporary Mumbai to life from the seamy side up, and it does so with brio, compassion and all-round cinematic excellence. For the first time since Gandhi, there’s genuine Oscar buzz around a movie set in India, with Indian characters, Indian actors and Indian themes.

I’m a huge fan of Vikas Swarup’s novel, one of the most delightful reads I’ve enjoyed in years. It’s about an orphan boy called Ram Mohammed Thomas who is about to win a TV quiz show based on Kaun Banega Crorepati and is arrested on suspicion of having got that far by cheating. He’s rescued by a female lawyer who gets him to tell his life story and explain how he, an uneducated slum kid, knew the answers to such difficult questions. Ram then tells a number of stories, each of which explains how he knew what he happened to know. Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy has changed pretty much all of Swarup’s stories, introduced a romantic element and even re-baptised the hero (who is now Jamal Malik). But he has retained the novel’s structure and premise, and Danny Boyle has brought its spirit alive in a way that i believe even Swarup would appreciate.

The film will be released in India, both in its original bilingual version and in a version dubbed in Hindi, in January. One fair warning to Indian viewers: its depiction of Indian poverty and slum life is searingly real. It was filmed in large part with small hand-held digital cameras on location in Dharavi and in the Juhu slums, and the mounds of garbage, the cesspits, the overflowing drains are all very present. There is even a scene involving human excrement that is both revolting and hilarious. But this is not, despite all of that, an exercise in the pornography of poverty. Slum life is depicted with integrity and dignity, and with a joie de vivre that transcends its setting. It is easy to see why this movie would appeal to international cinegoers in a way that a bleaker film like City of Joy could not.

I saw the film in New York with an audience made up largely of Indian expatriates. In the enthusiastic discussion that followed, only one person reacted negatively, saying that the film seemed to show all Indians as conniving, unprincipled and ruthless, and that the only compassionate people in the film were a pair of white tourists who give Jamal some money. Danny Boyle reacted to that charge by pointing out that his Scottish characters in Trainspotting were also conniving, unprincipled and ruthless, and that he happened to like to depict people like that. Something tells me that most Indian viewers will take this in stride - we live in a land largely devoid of larger-than-life heroes, and we have learned to take human beings as they are, which is to say, as grossly imperfect. And the film’s hero, played by the teenage British Indian actor Dev Patel with a look that combines intensity and expressiveness and yet seems utterly genuine, is as sincere a protagonist as you could hope to find.

The casting of Slumdog Millionaire is a dream. Anil Kapoor, as the sleazy TV host, diamonds winking in his earlobes, has never been better; the quietly understated Irrfan Khan turns in another bravura performance as the police inspector whose questioning brings out Jamal’s story. And the trio of children who play each of the principal characters - at ages 6, 12 and 18, roughly - could not be more appealing, more convincing or more gifted. The casting was such a triumph that the casting director, Loveleen Tandon, got promoted to the unusual credit of co-director. She plans to make her own film soon, and her association with Slumdog Millionaire is a great credential.

As a novelist myself, I wondered about the changes made to the book on its way to the screen. Some I could understand; cinema and novels are distinct art forms, and what works well in one medium does not necessarily translate well into the other. In particular, novels can afford to digress in ways that the attention span of movie audiences cannot accept: a film requires one clear over-arching narrative, fewer characters to keep straight, and a common thread from beginning to end. But some of the changes were arguably unnecessary: I lamented, in particular, the loss of ‘Ram Mohammed Thomas’ and his mongrelised Amar-Akbar-Anthony exemplifying of Indianness. I hope that people will both read the book and see the movie to savour the differing strengths of Swarup’s original premise and Danny Boyle’s transcreation of it.

But above all, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire is the work of an artist at the peak of his powers. India is his palette and Mumbai - that teeming ‘maximum city’, with 19 million strivers on the make, jostling, scheming, struggling and killing for success - is his brush. The portrait that emerges has been executed with bold strokes, vivid colours and striking images. It will stay in the mind’s eye a long time.

–

Holly Ellis
Assistant to Dr. Shashi Tharoor
Afras Ventures
230 Park Avenue Suite 2525
New York, NY 10169-0005
646-292-8456 Office
 Tharoor.Assistant at gmail.com

FROM SWASTIKA TO JIM CROW.

A 60 minutes Movie Directed by:    Lori Cheatle and Martin D. Toub,  was released in 2000.

***
When the Nazi government expelled Jewish scholars from German universities, those professors struggled to find a new home – until they arrived in the segregated American south. From Swastika to Jim Crow tells the story of the roughly fifty Jewish professors who fled from discrimination to find teaching positions in African-American universities, where they sympathized with the plight of their black colleagues and students.

“After, maybe, one or two weeks I became color blind,” one professor explains. “I didn’t have the impression any more that there were different people sitting in front of me. It was like any other kind of students.”

When Germany forced its Jewish intellectuals to flee, America embraced high-profile thinkers like Einstein, but the vast majority of lesser-known Jewish intellectual refuges struggled in the United States. Not only were jobs scarce because of the Depression, but prevalent anti-Semitism and anti-German sentiments made it even harder for these immigrant Jewish professors to find positions. They took teaching jobs in the South not because of the prestige, but rather because African American schools were the only ones willing to hire these normally discriminated against German Jews.

Exploring the similarities between German anti-Semitism and Southern racism through a rich compilation of interviews, archival film footage, and photographs, From Swastika to Jim Crow reveals the ways in which both African-American students and their Jewish professors faced a prejudice that isolated them from white southern society. Their common understanding bonded them together to create a safe haven of interracial, intellectual dialogue and friendship.

But gaining acceptance among their black students and colleagues wasn’t easy. These German professors brought their strict teaching style with them to America. They approached the classroom with greatest formality — wearing three-piece suits, and insisting that students rise when answering questions. Although the students were not accustomed to such an approach in the classroom, with time they grew fond of their foreign professors’ quirks.

These Jewish professors also hoped to become a bridge between the African-American and white communities. In one instance, a professor organized a gathering with both African-American and white families — asking the African-American guests, who arrived first, to sit in every other chair, so that when the white guests arrived they would be forced to interact with one another. The professor knew he couldn’t force people to give up their prejudice, but he was committed to doing whatever he could to encourage tolerance.

The horrors of prejudice became a common thread that could bind these exiled Jewish professors with their black students and colleagues. The film pairs shocking archival footage of the KKK dressed in costume and carrying torches with footage of Nazi salutes and marching German soldiers to compare the barbarity of both sick ideologies. A picture of a lynching shows a mob of average white citizens standing around casually and looking up at the tree, while photographs of the Holocaust depict emaciated corpses piled on top of each other.

And while these blacks and Jews grew beyond their horrific pasts to create a trusting society on campus,  a confrontation with white southerners wouldn’t be far behind when they ventured beyond the idyllic settings of their university campus.

When one Jewish professor invited a black colleague over for dinner, white townspeople rioted outside his home.

At another time, a Jewish couple went out to dinner with their African-American friends to a black restaurant — and were arrested for breaking sanitation laws. The simple act of sharing a meal challenged the south’s social order and undermined notions of inequality that the segregated society refused to abandon.

It was through these simple acts that Jewish intellectuals planted the seeds that would develop into the Civil Rights Movement. By treating their African-American students with the respect and dignity they deserved, Jewish professors acted as catalysts for a progressive thinking that recognized all citizens as equals.

One African-American student explains in the film that, having spent his youth feeling oppressed by the white southerners, he had assumed humanity’s conflict was derived from skin color. but his interactions with his Jewish professor offered him a more complex understanding. “Suddenly,” he says, “I realized it went beyond black and white.”

By sharing in each other’s frustrations and fears, these Jews and blacks began to realize that the “tragedies of the human family” extended beyond the persecution of their own race.

The Mapuche artifacts mentioned in the title belong to a private Chilean collection - “Domenyko Cassel” - and the show is called “MOON TEARS - Mapuche Art and Cosmology” - and it includes silverwork and textiles. An owner/curator/director of the collection -  Ms. Jaqueline Domeyko Cassel, herself a Polish-Mapuche Chilean Hybrid - walked us through the exhibit today, and explained the peculiar angles of what we saw.

This posting on www.SustainabiliTank.info is just our first reaction and we intend to add much more material later, including photos we took.

The exhibits can be visited at Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue, New York NY 10065, and it is open Monday to Saturday 10am - 4pm.

————-

The Mapuche (Mäpfuchieu) are the indigenous inhabitants of Central and Southern Chile and Southern Argentina. Actually they lived a bit more to the North, and were push southwards by the Inka. Then came the Spaniards - and the Mapuche called them “Winka” or new Inka. Again the attacks came from the North.

The Mapuche were known as Araucanians (araucanos) by the Spaniards. This is now considered pejorative by the people and the term Mapuche is the one most often used by people in conversation. Mapuche make up today about 6% of the Chilean population, who are particularly concentrated in the Araucania Region.

The Mapuche had an economy based on agriculture; their social organisation consisted of extended families, under the direction of a “lonko” or chief, although in times of war they would unite in larger groupings and elect a toqui (from Mapudungun toki “axe, axe-bearer”) to lead them.

The Mapuche today are a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups which shared a common social, religious and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage. Their influence extended between the Aconcagua River and Chiloé Island and later eastward to the Argentine pampa. The Mapuche (note that Mapuche can refer to the whole group of Picunches (people of the north), Huilliches and Moluche or Nguluche from Araucanía or exclusively to the Moluche or Nguluche from Araucanía) inhabited the valleys between the Itata and Toltén Rivers, as well as the Huilliche (people of the South), the Cuncos. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Mapuches expanded eastward into the Andes and pampas forming with the existing people the Poyas and Pehuenche. At about the same time ethnic groups of the pampa regions, the Puelche, Ranqueles and northern Aonikenk, called Patagons by Ferdinand Magellan, known now as Tehuelche, made contact with Mapuche groups, adopting their language and some culture (in what came to be called the Araucanization).

The Mapuche successfully resisted many attempts by the Inca Empire to subjugate them, despite their lack of state organisation. They fought against the Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui and his army. The result of the bloody three-day confrontation known as the Battle of the Maule was that the Inca conquest of the territories of Chile ended at the Maule river.

Then later, Moluche of the area the Spanish called Araucania fought against the Spaniards for over 300 years. Initial conquests of land by Spain in the late 16th century were repelled by the Mapuche, so effectively that there were areas to which Europeans did not return until late in the 19th century.

One of the main geographical boundaries was the Bío-Bío River, which the Mapuche used as a natural barrier to Spanish and Chilean incursion. The 300 years were not uniformly a period of hostility, but often allowed substantial trade and interchange between Mapuche and Spaniards or Chileans. Nevertheless, the long Mapuche resistance has become primarily known as the War of Arauco, and its early phase was immortalized in Alonso de Ercilla’s epic poem La Araucana.

Let us mention right here that The Rio Bio Bio is south of Concepcion, Chile and across the Andes from Neuquen, Argentina. From the movie I learned that the Mapuche tell that in the past there were no boundaries on the land. People moved freely to trade and visit. They could travel by horse in 15 days over the mountains to Argentina.It is the Winca that came from far way and put fences on the land.

From the mid 17th century the Mapuches and the governors of Chile made a series of treaties in order to end the hostilities. By the late eighteenth century many Mapuche loncos had accepted the de jure sovereignty of the Spanish king of their lands while having a de facto independence.

When Chile revolted from the Spanish crown, some Mapuche chiefs sided with the royalists of Vicente Benavides. The aid of the Mapuches were vital to the Spanish since they had lost the control of all cities and ports north of Valdivia. Mapuches valued the treaties done with Spanish authorities, however most regarded the matter with indifference and took advantage of both sides. After Chile’s independence from Spain, the Mapuche coexisted and traded with their neighbours, who prudently remained north of the Bío-Bío River, although clashes occurred frequently.

Chilean population pressures increased on the Mapuche borders, and by the 1880s Chile extended both to the north and to the south of the Mapuche heartlands. Further, Chile in the 1880s, as a result of its preparation for and its victory in the War of the Pacific against Bolivia and Peru, found itself with a large standing army and a relatively modern arsenal for the period. Finally, in the mid- to late-1880s, partially on the pretext of crushing a French adventurer, Orelie-Antoine de Tounens, who had declared himself King of Araucania, Chile overwhelmed the Mapuche in the course of the so-called “pacification of the Araucanía”.

  Vintage engraving of Mapuche.

Using a combination of force and diplomacy, Chile’s government obliged some Mapuche leaders to sign a treaty absorbing the Araucanian territories into Chile. The immediate impact of the war was widespread starvation and disease. It has been claimed that the Mapuche population dropped from a total of half a million to 25,000 within a generation, though the latter figure has been called an exaggeration by several authorities. In the post-conquest period, however, there was internment of a significant percentage of the Mapuche, the wholesale destruction of the Mapuche herding, agricultural and trading economies, the wholesale looting of Mapuche property (real and personal - including a large amount of silver jewelry to replenish the Chilean national coffers), and the creation and institutionalization of a system of reserves called reducciones along lines similar to North American reservation systems. Subsequent generations of Mapuche live in extreme poverty as a direct result of being conquered and expropriated.

—–

Mapuche descendants now live across southern Chile and Argentina; some maintain their traditions and continue living from agriculture, but a growing majority have migrated to cities in search of better economic opportunities. Contrary to popular imagination, the majority of the Mapuche people live in urban areas, especially around Santiago  Chile’s region IX continues to have a rural population made up of approximately 80%; there are also substantial Mapuche populations in regions X, VIII, and VII.

The Ralco Hydroelectric Plant is a hydroelectric power station in Bío-Bío Region, Chile. The plant uses water from the upper Bío-Bío River and produces 690 MW of electricity. The plant was built by ENDESA in 2004 and as a result of its construction Mapuche were uprooted from their valley in the Bio Bio River area. Some of this background found its way into the exhibit via a video clip of about 20 minutes.

In recent years, there has been an attempt by the Chilean government to redress some of the inequities of the past. The Parliament voted, in 1993, Law n° 19 253 (Indigenous Law, or Ley indígena)  which recognized the Mapuche people, and seven other ethnic minorities as well as the Mapudungun language and culture. In the frame of this law, Mapundungun, which was prohibited before, was included in the curriculum of elementary schools around Temuco. But the Mapuche language is an oral language - real effort would mean the formulation of a phonetic system for nailing the language down in writing. There is rich cultural material that will be totally lost otherwise.

Furthermore, representatives from Mapuche organisations joined the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) seeking recognition and protection for their cultural and land rights.

The Extent Of The Mapuche Lands Today.

Flag of the Mapuche

Land disputes and violent interactions do continue in some Mapuche areas, particularly in the northern sections of the IX region between and around Traiguén and Lumaco - where a history of conflict continues into the present. In an effort to defuse tensions, a special government body, the Commission for Historical Truth and New Treatment, issued a report in 2003 calling for drastic changes in Chile’s treatment of its indigenous people, more than 80 percent of whom are Mapuche. The recommendations included the formal recognition of political and “territorial” rights for aboriginal peoples, as well as efforts to promote their cultural identity.

Though Japanese and Swiss interests are active in the region that Chileans call “Araucanía” and the Mapuche call “Ngulu Mapu”, both of the main forestry companies are Chilean-owned. On land the Mapuche claim is theirs, the firms have planted hundreds of thousands of acres with Monterey pine and eucalyptus trees, species that are not native to the region and that consume large amounts of water and fertilizer.

Chilean exports of wood to the United States, almost all of which come from this southern region, are about $600 million a year and rising. Though an international campaign led by the conservation group Forest Ethics resulted in the Home Depot chain and other leading wood importers agreeing to revise their purchasing policies, to “provide for the protection of native forests in Chile,” some Mapuche leaders were not satisfied.

In recent years, Mapuche activists have been prosecuted under counter-terrorism legislation originally introduced by the military dictatorship, under Pinochet. The law allows prosecutors to withhold evidence from the defense for up to six months, and to conceal the identity of witnesses, who may give evidence in court behind screens. There are several violent activist groups, which utilize various tactics, including the destruction of private property, including, but not limited to, the burning of structures and pastures. Protesters from Mapuche communities have engaged in these tactics against multinational forestry corporations and private individuals, all of which possess and occupy territories originally owned by Mapuche communities.

——-

There were 604,349 Mapuche according to the census of 2002, making up approximately 4% of the Chilean population, while an estimated 300,000 living in Argentina. Due to the loss of their lands, many Mapuche now live in impoverished conditions in large cities such as Santiago. Mapuche resistance continues, especially against the large forestry companies exploiting traditional lands. Pinochet-era anti-terrorism laws have frequently been used in recent years against certain community leaders and Mapuche political activists.

At the time of the arrival of Europeans, the Mapuche were capable of sufficiently organizing themselves to create a network of forts and complex defensive buildings but also ceremonial constructions such as some mounds recently discovered near Purén. They quickly adopted iron metal-working (they already worked copper, and horseback-riding and the use of cavalry in war from the Spaniards, along with the cultivation of wheat and sheep. In the long 300-year coexistence between the Spanish colonies and the relatively well-delineated autonomous Mapuche regions, the Mapuche also developed a strong tradition of trading with the Spanish/Chileans. It is this which lies at the heart of the Mapuche silver-working tradition, for it was from the large and widely-dispersed quantity of Spanish and Chilean silver coins that the Mapuche wrought their elaborate jewelry, head bands, etc.

Mapuche languages are spoken in Chile and to a smaller extent in Argentina. They have two branches: Huilliche and Mapudungun. Although not related, there is some discernible lexical influence from Quechua. It is estimated that only about 200,000 full-fluency speakers remain in Chile, and the language still receives only token support in the educational system. In recent years it has started to be taught in rural schools of Bio-Bio, Araucanía and Los Lagos Regions.

Cultural tidbits:

Machi is the Shaman

Gnecha is the primary deity

Pillan are the major deities

The Earth is Mapu

The Upprer World is Wenu Mapu

To the Maouche space is a conjunction between their cold version of the visible, living world and the earth’s surface (Mapu or Nag Mapu) and the ideologically construed invisible upper world of “Cosmological” surface or plane (Wenu Mapu and Minche Mapu) where good and evil and all the deities reside. The planes are drawn on a Mach’s drum that is shown in the exhibit.

The “reve” poll is a totem poll with steps - the one shown in the exhibit belongs to the Smithonian Institution - so the Machi can climb up to the Wenu Mapu.

The exhibit also shows a wooden “Machi Stick Horse” that is used to chase away the evil spirits.

ADMAPU = the laws formed by the ancient customs and norms so that the Mapuche know the proper way to behave and act as members of their society.

The following is the first artifact that Ms. Domeyko bought for the collection - a silver made couple of Mapuche man and woman. Silver was the metal of choice. The Mapuche thought gold was of lower value. The silver color is the color of the Moon Tears - so the art work is in silver.