The Afghan Supreme Court is upholding a 20 year prison sentence given to student and journalist Parwez Kambakhsh for blasphemy after he simply downloaded from the internet and circulated an article about women's rights under Islam.
We now must rally together to pressure Afghan President Hamid Karzai to pardon this innocent man.
Kambakhsh was originally sentenced to death for his "crime." His sentence was later reduced to jail time for distributing the internet article. Freedom-of-the-press advocates and human rights groups who have championed Kambakhsh's case are horrified by the decision.
27 March 2009
Action Alert: Jailed Without Justice
Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum. Tragically, Mr. N's story is just one of many in our new report.1
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum. Tragically, Mr. N's story is just one of many in our new report.1
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum. Tragically, Mr. N's story is just one of many in our new report.1
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our researchers found:
~lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers, and survivors of torture are being detained while they fight for protection
~US citizens and lawful permanent residents can be detained for years without any review of their custody
~Meaningful oversight and accountability for abuse or neglect in detention is almost nonexistent
~Individuals in detention often lack treatment for their medical needs and 74 people have died while in immigration detention over the past five years
Although we're working with members in both the Senate and House on legislation to permanently fix the problems, innocent people are suffering today, and need help now. Please sign our letter to Janet Napolitano.
We've got to show the DHS that this is a priority for us. We can't let them delay while U.S. citizens, asylum seekers and survivors of torture are being wrongly detained and treated like criminals without any meaningful legal recourse.
1Read our new report: Jailed Without Justice (PDF 662K).
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum. Tragically, Mr. N's story is just one of many in our new report.1
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum. Tragically, Mr. N's story is just one of many in our new report.1
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our researchers found:
~lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers, and survivors of torture are being detained while they fight for protection
~US citizens and lawful permanent residents can be detained for years without any review of their custody
~Meaningful oversight and accountability for abuse or neglect in detention is almost nonexistent
~Individuals in detention often lack treatment for their medical needs and 74 people have died while in immigration detention over the past five years
Although we're working with members in both the Senate and House on legislation to permanently fix the problems, innocent people are suffering today, and need help now. Please sign our letter to Janet Napolitano.
We've got to show the DHS that this is a priority for us. We can't let them delay while U.S. citizens, asylum seekers and survivors of torture are being wrongly detained and treated like criminals without any meaningful legal recourse.
1Read our new report: Jailed Without Justice (PDF 662K).
Throw Tomatoes at AIG
The people at AIG who are most responsible for the severity of the financial crisis should be in jail. But instead, they're slated to get $450 million in bonuses. Infuriating, right?
So a MoveOn member created a game to show just how mad Americans are at AIG. It's called The Great AIG Tomato Toss and it's based on the idea that we should stop throwing money at the people who ruined our economy—and start throwing tomatoes.
I just played, and it's a blast. Can you play too—and help reach the goal of 5 million tomatoes thrown? http://www.moveon.org/tomato/
So a MoveOn member created a game to show just how mad Americans are at AIG. It's called The Great AIG Tomato Toss and it's based on the idea that we should stop throwing money at the people who ruined our economy—and start throwing tomatoes.
I just played, and it's a blast. Can you play too—and help reach the goal of 5 million tomatoes thrown? http://www.moveon.org/tomato/
Action Alert: Justice for those brutally beat and raped
What do you do when the Supreme Court stands with you and your government works against you?
Last month, the Mexican Supreme Court confirmed that women in San Salvador Atenco suffered major physical and sexual abuse at the hands of police officers. But even with the affirmation of the highest court in Mexico, the women in Atenco are still waiting for these officers to be held accountable for their crimes.
The current Attorney General of Mexico, Eduardo Medina-Mora, remains suspiciously silent on this case that his office is responsible for handling. But it doesn't take much investigating to find out why: At the time of the attacks, Medina-Mora was in charge of the same police officers who were implicated in the assaults. Any real investigation into the attacks and arrests could surely place significant blame squarely on his shoulders.
If securing justice continues to rely on Attorney General Medina-Mora, then the police officers guilty of brutally beating and raping the women in Atenco will remain free to roam the streets, a threat to those they're meant to protect.
Sign the petition.
Protesters demanding justice for the women in Atenco.
President Calderón must step in to prove his leadership and uphold the rule of law in Mexico. When you add your name to our online petition, you're adding your voice to our cries against injustice, impunity and unlawful attacks on peaceful demonstrators.
By the end of April, we want to send such a long list of names to President Calderón, that he is compelled to take action. We want President Calderón to stand on the side of the Mexican people and on the side of human rights.
In May, three years will have passed since this horrific violence took place in Atenco. We cannot allow the Attorney General of Mexico to continue to side-step the justice system any more.
Sign our petition to President Calderón asking him to see to it that all those responsible for the crimes against the women of Atenco are brought to justice.
Just over a week ago, our activists gathered in Chicago and rallied around this very cause. Hundreds stood at the doors of the Mexican Consulate and demanded the Mexican government's attention and action. Our presence made our message clear -- we will not back down.
The Mexican Supreme Court has also made their message clear -- the women of Atenco deserve justice. While the Attorney General may try to drag his heels at every step of this process, President Calderón has the power to move things forward now.
Without President Calderón's leadership, any chance for justice for the women in Atenco could be lost.
Last month, the Mexican Supreme Court confirmed that women in San Salvador Atenco suffered major physical and sexual abuse at the hands of police officers. But even with the affirmation of the highest court in Mexico, the women in Atenco are still waiting for these officers to be held accountable for their crimes.
The current Attorney General of Mexico, Eduardo Medina-Mora, remains suspiciously silent on this case that his office is responsible for handling. But it doesn't take much investigating to find out why: At the time of the attacks, Medina-Mora was in charge of the same police officers who were implicated in the assaults. Any real investigation into the attacks and arrests could surely place significant blame squarely on his shoulders.
If securing justice continues to rely on Attorney General Medina-Mora, then the police officers guilty of brutally beating and raping the women in Atenco will remain free to roam the streets, a threat to those they're meant to protect.
Sign the petition.
Protesters demanding justice for the women in Atenco.
President Calderón must step in to prove his leadership and uphold the rule of law in Mexico. When you add your name to our online petition, you're adding your voice to our cries against injustice, impunity and unlawful attacks on peaceful demonstrators.
By the end of April, we want to send such a long list of names to President Calderón, that he is compelled to take action. We want President Calderón to stand on the side of the Mexican people and on the side of human rights.
In May, three years will have passed since this horrific violence took place in Atenco. We cannot allow the Attorney General of Mexico to continue to side-step the justice system any more.
Sign our petition to President Calderón asking him to see to it that all those responsible for the crimes against the women of Atenco are brought to justice.
Just over a week ago, our activists gathered in Chicago and rallied around this very cause. Hundreds stood at the doors of the Mexican Consulate and demanded the Mexican government's attention and action. Our presence made our message clear -- we will not back down.
The Mexican Supreme Court has also made their message clear -- the women of Atenco deserve justice. While the Attorney General may try to drag his heels at every step of this process, President Calderón has the power to move things forward now.
Without President Calderón's leadership, any chance for justice for the women in Atenco could be lost.
17 March 2009
Action Alert: Jinus Sobhani Released from Prison
Good news! Iran's Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi's secretary, Jinus Sobhani, has been released from prison on bail. Sobhani had been detained in solitary confinement since January 14 without access to a lawyer. Now we must make sure 60-year-old Alieh Eghdamdoust is freed. She was recently imprisoned for her participation in a peaceful protest against Iran's discriminatory laws towards women some three years ago. She was among seventy women arrested for this "crime" and is now having to serve a three-year prison sentence.
This news comes after alarming series of attacks against women's rights and human rights leaders by the Iranian government. Join feminist activists worldwide in urging Iranian leaders and the United Nations to pressure the Iranian government to stop harassing women's rights activists.
Late last year, Dr. Ebadi's Center for the Defense of Human Rights, where Sobhani worked, was forcibly closed. Following this, Ebadi's personal property was seized, her home was vandalized by an angry mob and Sobhani was arrested.
Help put an end to this harassment. Urge Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Iran's Head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay; and the U.N. and Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to intervene now to free Eghdamdoust from prison and to re-open Dr. Ebadi's center immediately!
This news comes after alarming series of attacks against women's rights and human rights leaders by the Iranian government. Join feminist activists worldwide in urging Iranian leaders and the United Nations to pressure the Iranian government to stop harassing women's rights activists.
Late last year, Dr. Ebadi's Center for the Defense of Human Rights, where Sobhani worked, was forcibly closed. Following this, Ebadi's personal property was seized, her home was vandalized by an angry mob and Sobhani was arrested.
Help put an end to this harassment. Urge Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Iran's Head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay; and the U.N. and Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to intervene now to free Eghdamdoust from prison and to re-open Dr. Ebadi's center immediately!
14 March 2009
American citizen shot in the head by Israeli forces in West Bank
Various, Friday, March 13th, 2009
AMERICAN CITIZEN CRITICALLY INJURED AFTER BEING SHOT IN THE HEAD BY ISRAELI FORCES IN NI’LIN
The link to watch for this story:
http://palsolidarity.org/2009/03/5324
For Immediate Release
13th March 2009, Ni’lin Village--An American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Ni’lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear-gas canister.
Tristan Anderson from California USA, 37 years old, has been taken to Israeli hospital Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Anderson is unconscious and has been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister. He is currently being operated on.
Tristan was shot by the new tear-gas canisters that can be shot up to 500m. I ran over as I saw someone had been shot, while the Israeli forces continued to fire tear-gas at us. When an ambulance came, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow the ambulance through the checkpoint just outside the village. After 5 minutes of arguing with the soldiers, the ambulance passed.
The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008. The black canister, labeled in Hebrew as “40mm bullet special/long range,” can shoot over 400 meters. The gas canister does not make a noise when fired or emit a smoke tail. A combination of the canister’s high velocity and silence is extremely dangerous and has caused numerous injuries, including a Palestinian male whose leg was broken in January 2009.
Please Contact: Adam Taylor (English), ISM Media Office +972 8503948
Sasha Solanas (English), ISM Media Office - +972 549032981
Woody Berch (English), at Tel Hashomer hospital +972 548053082
Tristan Anderson
Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked a demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall through the village of Ni’lin’s land. Another resident from Ni’lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition.
Four Ni’lin residents have been killed during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land.
Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with live ammunition on 29th July 2008. The following day, Yousef Amira (17) was shot twice with rubber-coated steel bullets, leaving him brain dead. He died a week later on 4 August 2008. Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22), was the third Ni’lin resident to be killed by Israeli forces. He was shot in the back with live ammunition on 28 December 2008. That same day, Mohammed Khawaje (20), was shot in the head with live ammunition, leaving him brain dead. He died three days in a Ramallah hospital.
Residents in the village of Ni’lin have been demonstrating against the construction of the Apartheid Wall, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Ni’lin will lose approximately 2500 dunums of agricultural land when the construction of the Wall is completed. Ni’lin was 57,000 dunums in 1948, reduced to 33,000 dunums in 1967, currently is 10,000 dunums and will be 7,500 dunums after the construction of the Wall.
Updates:
Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital, tells Ha’aretz:
He’s in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests,” She described Anderson’s condition as life-threatening.
Israeli activist Jonathan Pollack told Ynet:
… the firing incident took place inside the village and not next to the fence. There were clashes in the earlier hours, but he wasn’t part of them. He didn’t throw stones and wasn’t standing next to the stone throwers.
There was really no reason to fire at them. The Dutch girl standing next to him was not hurt. It only injured him, like a bullet.
AMERICAN CITIZEN CRITICALLY INJURED AFTER BEING SHOT IN THE HEAD BY ISRAELI FORCES IN NI’LIN
The link to watch for this story:
http://palsolidarity.org/2009/03/5324
For Immediate Release
13th March 2009, Ni’lin Village--An American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Ni’lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear-gas canister.
Tristan Anderson from California USA, 37 years old, has been taken to Israeli hospital Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Anderson is unconscious and has been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister. He is currently being operated on.
Tristan was shot by the new tear-gas canisters that can be shot up to 500m. I ran over as I saw someone had been shot, while the Israeli forces continued to fire tear-gas at us. When an ambulance came, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow the ambulance through the checkpoint just outside the village. After 5 minutes of arguing with the soldiers, the ambulance passed.
The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008. The black canister, labeled in Hebrew as “40mm bullet special/long range,” can shoot over 400 meters. The gas canister does not make a noise when fired or emit a smoke tail. A combination of the canister’s high velocity and silence is extremely dangerous and has caused numerous injuries, including a Palestinian male whose leg was broken in January 2009.
Please Contact: Adam Taylor (English), ISM Media Office +972 8503948
Sasha Solanas (English), ISM Media Office - +972 549032981
Woody Berch (English), at Tel Hashomer hospital +972 548053082
Tristan Anderson
Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked a demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall through the village of Ni’lin’s land. Another resident from Ni’lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition.
Four Ni’lin residents have been killed during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land.
Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with live ammunition on 29th July 2008. The following day, Yousef Amira (17) was shot twice with rubber-coated steel bullets, leaving him brain dead. He died a week later on 4 August 2008. Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22), was the third Ni’lin resident to be killed by Israeli forces. He was shot in the back with live ammunition on 28 December 2008. That same day, Mohammed Khawaje (20), was shot in the head with live ammunition, leaving him brain dead. He died three days in a Ramallah hospital.
Residents in the village of Ni’lin have been demonstrating against the construction of the Apartheid Wall, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Ni’lin will lose approximately 2500 dunums of agricultural land when the construction of the Wall is completed. Ni’lin was 57,000 dunums in 1948, reduced to 33,000 dunums in 1967, currently is 10,000 dunums and will be 7,500 dunums after the construction of the Wall.
Updates:
Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital, tells Ha’aretz:
He’s in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests,” She described Anderson’s condition as life-threatening.
Israeli activist Jonathan Pollack told Ynet:
… the firing incident took place inside the village and not next to the fence. There were clashes in the earlier hours, but he wasn’t part of them. He didn’t throw stones and wasn’t standing next to the stone throwers.
There was really no reason to fire at them. The Dutch girl standing next to him was not hurt. It only injured him, like a bullet.
13 March 2009
Anyone Going to Paris?
Gwyneth Paltrow has a new website where she and her friends dedicate each week to another fun subject. This past week was GO, and the subject of interest was Paris! So if you are planning a trip to Paris check out all the little places mentioned. Also, if you'd like to check out Ms. Paltrow's new site click here.
Paris
When I was ten years old, my father and I took a trip to Paris, leaving my younger brother and mother in London where she was filming a movie. My dad believed in one-on-one time with us, and sometimes that extended to a weekend away. We stayed at a great hotel and he said I could order whatever I wanted for breakfast (French fries). We went to the Pompidou museum, the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre - the usual spots. It was pretty great. On the plane back to London he asked me if I knew why we had gone, just he and I, to Paris for the weekend. I said no, but I felt so lucky for the trip. He said, “I wanted you to see Paris for the first time with a man who would always love you, no matter what.” From that time on, Paris was and continues to be very special to me. I lived there for five months in 1994 and I have made many trips back. These are the places in Paris I stay and eat and toast my dad.
Love,
Gwyneth Paltrow
Places to Eatl’Ami Louis
32, rue du Vertbois
3e
+33 1 48 87 77 48
There are two schools of thought regarding l’Ami Louis: one is that it is an overpriced place for tourists and the other is that it is one of the best, most venerable bistros in Paris. I am firmly in the school of the latter. It is small and wood paneled with an ancient oven and a sicko wine list. Every time I go, I see a former French president or the like, and I leave so full that I walk back to the hotel.Le Voltaire
27, Quai Voltaire
7e
+33 1 42 61 17 49
Le Voltaire is a lovely place on the river with a lighter type of French fare (grapefruit and avocado salad). It is one of my favorite spots to go for lunch. Market
15, Avenue Matignon
8e
+33 1 56 43 40 90
www.jean-georges.com
From superchef Jean-Georges, this restaurant serves Asian/nouvelle French cuisine done wonderfully and served in a clean, contemporary space.Kinugawa
9, rue du Mont-Thabor
1e
+33 1 42 60 65 07
http://kinugawa-hanawa.com
After a couple of days in Paris when I need to lay off the butter and goose fat, I head to Kinugawa for a Japanese lunch. After a lovely bowl of miso soup, some beautiful sashimi and a seaweed salad, I am ready to partake in all things French once more.T’CHA La Maison de Thé
6, rue du Pont de Lodi
6e
+33 1 43 29 61 31
This is a little teahouse off the beaten track in the sixth arrondissement. It is a great place for a light lunch or a perfect cup of sencha.Da Mimmo
39, Boulevard Magenta
10e
+33 1 42 06 44 47
www.damimmo.fr
I was told about Da Mimmo a few years ago by one of my coolest, most in-the-know friends. It is rustic Italian, super simple, super good. There is a massive display of the day’s fresh antipasti in the center of the room and that’s the best part of the dinner. No tourists here.Le Duc
243 Boulevard Raspail
14e
+33 1 43 20 96 30
http://leduc.abemadi.com
Don’t let the nautically themed room put you off. The seafood is fresh and wonderful.Mariage Frères
13, rue des Grands-Augustins
6e
+33 1 40 51 82 50
www.mariagefreres.com
I absolutely adore this tearoom and shop. It’s perfect for afternoon tea and beautiful objects for the home. Don’t miss the famous Mariage Frères candles (the Darjeeling one is my fave).Cinq-Mars
51, rue Verneuil
7e
+33 1 45 44 69 13
This place is the cozy, affordable, locals-only restaurant you always search for but never find when traveling. The food is simple but well prepared and it’s a nice break from the big, loud brasseries.Joséphine Chez Dumonet
117, rue du Cherche-Midi
6e
+33 1 45 48 52 40
This old-school bistro is one of my favorite places. The room is quite plain and unimpressive if you are looking to be dazzled but it has a wonderful feeling and it is very authentic. I love the duck confit...and watching all of the regulars. Restaurant Hélène Darroze
4, rue d’Assas
6e
+33 1 42 22 00 11
www.helenedarroze.com
Hélène Darroze is one of the few women to ever be awarded two Michelin stars. And these stars are well deserved. The food is terrific. And the room is quiet, calm and elegant.Brasserie Balzac
49, rue des Ecoles
5e
+33 1 43 54 13 67
Balzac is a great old brasserie with excellent service (the waiters have been there forever but are not pissed off, they retain a dry sense of humor). The food is good, classic brasserie fare and it’s a great spot for Sunday lunch or late dinner.Rose Bakery
30, rue Debelleyme
3e
+33 1 49 96 54 01
My friend Elena just got back from Paris and she had the most delicious meal at Rose Bakery. They have organic produce, fresh tarts, quiches and a sweet waitstaff.Lina’s Café
22, rue des Saints-Peres
7e
+33 1 40 20 42 78
www.linascafe.fr
Lina’s is a chain but you wouldn’t know it, biting into their famous turkey club. Fresh and delicious, it’s the perfect inexpensive meal to have while walking through the streets of Paris.Places to Stay Ritz Paris
15 Place Vendôme
1e
+33 1 43 16 30 30
www.ritzparis.com
Although I occasionally try the “new” spot or an old-new spot, I always keep coming back to the Ritz. The place is just beautiful and the service is pretty flawless for France. Yes, it costs an arm and a leg, but it’s worth it. Hotel Montalembert
3, rue de Montalembert
7e
+33 1 45 49 68 68
www.montalembert.com
This hotel is very small (as are the rooms) but it is clean and modern and tucked away in a great area off Boulevard Saint-Germain. You don’t feel like a tourist in the way you do when you stay at one of the grande dame hotels. When I shot a film in Paris, my dad stayed here with our black Labrador for weeks - it was our home away from home. They were incredibly gracious and welcoming. Room 81 has a view of the Eiffel Tower. Hôtel Particulier Montmartre
23, Avenue Junot
Pavillon D
8e
+33 1 53 41 81 40
http://hotel-particulier-montmartre.com/fr
This once grand mansion turned five-room chic hotel was recommended to me by a discerning travel journalist. He had just gone to the opening and said it was really special and worth checking out. Each room is distinctly decorated by various artists. I’ve never stayed in Montmartre, but I love the idea of being in that area of Paris. Hotel Saint Vincent
5 rue du Pré aux Clercs
7e
+33 1 42 61 01 51
www.hotelsaintvincentparis.com
Another spot in Saint Germain, this small boutique hotel is a great deal in an otherwise overpriced area. I have friends that have stayed here and rave about the intimate, clean rooms and ideal location.
Paris
When I was ten years old, my father and I took a trip to Paris, leaving my younger brother and mother in London where she was filming a movie. My dad believed in one-on-one time with us, and sometimes that extended to a weekend away. We stayed at a great hotel and he said I could order whatever I wanted for breakfast (French fries). We went to the Pompidou museum, the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre - the usual spots. It was pretty great. On the plane back to London he asked me if I knew why we had gone, just he and I, to Paris for the weekend. I said no, but I felt so lucky for the trip. He said, “I wanted you to see Paris for the first time with a man who would always love you, no matter what.” From that time on, Paris was and continues to be very special to me. I lived there for five months in 1994 and I have made many trips back. These are the places in Paris I stay and eat and toast my dad.
Love,
Gwyneth Paltrow
Places to Eatl’Ami Louis
32, rue du Vertbois
3e
+33 1 48 87 77 48
There are two schools of thought regarding l’Ami Louis: one is that it is an overpriced place for tourists and the other is that it is one of the best, most venerable bistros in Paris. I am firmly in the school of the latter. It is small and wood paneled with an ancient oven and a sicko wine list. Every time I go, I see a former French president or the like, and I leave so full that I walk back to the hotel.Le Voltaire
27, Quai Voltaire
7e
+33 1 42 61 17 49
Le Voltaire is a lovely place on the river with a lighter type of French fare (grapefruit and avocado salad). It is one of my favorite spots to go for lunch. Market
15, Avenue Matignon
8e
+33 1 56 43 40 90
www.jean-georges.com
From superchef Jean-Georges, this restaurant serves Asian/nouvelle French cuisine done wonderfully and served in a clean, contemporary space.Kinugawa
9, rue du Mont-Thabor
1e
+33 1 42 60 65 07
http://kinugawa-hanawa.com
After a couple of days in Paris when I need to lay off the butter and goose fat, I head to Kinugawa for a Japanese lunch. After a lovely bowl of miso soup, some beautiful sashimi and a seaweed salad, I am ready to partake in all things French once more.T’CHA La Maison de Thé
6, rue du Pont de Lodi
6e
+33 1 43 29 61 31
This is a little teahouse off the beaten track in the sixth arrondissement. It is a great place for a light lunch or a perfect cup of sencha.Da Mimmo
39, Boulevard Magenta
10e
+33 1 42 06 44 47
www.damimmo.fr
I was told about Da Mimmo a few years ago by one of my coolest, most in-the-know friends. It is rustic Italian, super simple, super good. There is a massive display of the day’s fresh antipasti in the center of the room and that’s the best part of the dinner. No tourists here.Le Duc
243 Boulevard Raspail
14e
+33 1 43 20 96 30
http://leduc.abemadi.com
Don’t let the nautically themed room put you off. The seafood is fresh and wonderful.Mariage Frères
13, rue des Grands-Augustins
6e
+33 1 40 51 82 50
www.mariagefreres.com
I absolutely adore this tearoom and shop. It’s perfect for afternoon tea and beautiful objects for the home. Don’t miss the famous Mariage Frères candles (the Darjeeling one is my fave).Cinq-Mars
51, rue Verneuil
7e
+33 1 45 44 69 13
This place is the cozy, affordable, locals-only restaurant you always search for but never find when traveling. The food is simple but well prepared and it’s a nice break from the big, loud brasseries.Joséphine Chez Dumonet
117, rue du Cherche-Midi
6e
+33 1 45 48 52 40
This old-school bistro is one of my favorite places. The room is quite plain and unimpressive if you are looking to be dazzled but it has a wonderful feeling and it is very authentic. I love the duck confit...and watching all of the regulars. Restaurant Hélène Darroze
4, rue d’Assas
6e
+33 1 42 22 00 11
www.helenedarroze.com
Hélène Darroze is one of the few women to ever be awarded two Michelin stars. And these stars are well deserved. The food is terrific. And the room is quiet, calm and elegant.Brasserie Balzac
49, rue des Ecoles
5e
+33 1 43 54 13 67
Balzac is a great old brasserie with excellent service (the waiters have been there forever but are not pissed off, they retain a dry sense of humor). The food is good, classic brasserie fare and it’s a great spot for Sunday lunch or late dinner.Rose Bakery
30, rue Debelleyme
3e
+33 1 49 96 54 01
My friend Elena just got back from Paris and she had the most delicious meal at Rose Bakery. They have organic produce, fresh tarts, quiches and a sweet waitstaff.Lina’s Café
22, rue des Saints-Peres
7e
+33 1 40 20 42 78
www.linascafe.fr
Lina’s is a chain but you wouldn’t know it, biting into their famous turkey club. Fresh and delicious, it’s the perfect inexpensive meal to have while walking through the streets of Paris.Places to Stay Ritz Paris
15 Place Vendôme
1e
+33 1 43 16 30 30
www.ritzparis.com
Although I occasionally try the “new” spot or an old-new spot, I always keep coming back to the Ritz. The place is just beautiful and the service is pretty flawless for France. Yes, it costs an arm and a leg, but it’s worth it. Hotel Montalembert
3, rue de Montalembert
7e
+33 1 45 49 68 68
www.montalembert.com
This hotel is very small (as are the rooms) but it is clean and modern and tucked away in a great area off Boulevard Saint-Germain. You don’t feel like a tourist in the way you do when you stay at one of the grande dame hotels. When I shot a film in Paris, my dad stayed here with our black Labrador for weeks - it was our home away from home. They were incredibly gracious and welcoming. Room 81 has a view of the Eiffel Tower. Hôtel Particulier Montmartre
23, Avenue Junot
Pavillon D
8e
+33 1 53 41 81 40
http://hotel-particulier-montmartre.com/fr
This once grand mansion turned five-room chic hotel was recommended to me by a discerning travel journalist. He had just gone to the opening and said it was really special and worth checking out. Each room is distinctly decorated by various artists. I’ve never stayed in Montmartre, but I love the idea of being in that area of Paris. Hotel Saint Vincent
5 rue du Pré aux Clercs
7e
+33 1 42 61 01 51
www.hotelsaintvincentparis.com
Another spot in Saint Germain, this small boutique hotel is a great deal in an otherwise overpriced area. I have friends that have stayed here and rave about the intimate, clean rooms and ideal location.
Amendment 629 Defeated!!
The days of gratuitous attacks on Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims appear to be on the wane.
Tuesday, the Senate debated three amendments to the Fiscal 2009 Budget, offered by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the first of which (Amendment 629) read: "None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be made available to resettle Palestinians from Gaza into the United States."
There was much head-scratching when the amendment first appeared. Why was it offered, and what was it about? Well, there have been reports on some fringe websites claiming that President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order that would allocate $20.3 million dollars to settle hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza into the U.S - and reached such a frenzy that the internet rumor debunking site snopes.com devoted a page to demonstrating the absurd nature of this claim. (We at AAI spent five minutes on Google and did the same.)
Undeterred, Senator Kyl brought that amendment to the floor yesterday, along with two other anti-Palestinian amendments - one sought to hold up U.S. assistance to Gaza on the pretense of keeping it from Hamas (Amendment 631), and the other dealt with Egypt and arms smuggling into Gaza (Amendment 630). Kyl ran into stiff opposition on all fronts, and it certainly appeared to be organized.
First, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, rose first to speak against Amendments 629 and 630. Noting that he had recently been in Gaza, Egypt and Israel, Kerry called the amendment on Egypt "frankly, not helpful." But it was for the bizarre anti-settlement amendment that he showed true scorn, stating that it "assumes that every resident of Gaza, regardless of age, background, political opinion or any other distinguishing characteristic, is pro-Hamas and ineligible for consideration for resettlement in the United States, even if they are lucky enough to escape from Gaza." He then added, "This amendment, therefore, is not only unnecessary but it would establish for the first time since the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act a law that discriminates against a particular nationality in a particular geographic region."
Kyl then stated that he had written the amendment in "response to a news story," but that he had since been told by the State Department that the story was false, and that he intended "tomorrow to withdraw it." That, however, did not end the debate. [Kyl did in fact withdraw the Amendment today, still claiming that it had been prompted by a "flurry of news stories."
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) rose in a tag-team with Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH). Speaking first, Leahy called Amendment 630 a "public slap in the face...of an ally," and the went on to state:
"[T]he omnibus bill already explicitly authorizes assistance provided to Egypt 'for border security programs and activities in the Sinai.' That was language put in by the distinguished ranking Republican member on the Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Gregg, precisely for the purpose of the Kyl amendment--to enable those funds to be used to help police the border and reduce the smuggling into Gaza. ...I am more interested not in what makes great talking points, but in stopping the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. That is why Senator Gregg put the language into the foreign aid bill in the first place."
Leahy, however, saved his scorn for the Amendment 629. His remarks are worth quoting at length:
"Frankly, it is unnecessary and for the United States, a Nation of immigrants, it goes against everything we stand for.
"We don't resettle anybody from Gaza, nor do we resettle anybody from Gaza who is living in the U.N. refugee camps in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan. The amendment is a solution looking for a problem. If a Palestinian from Gaza gets to a place like Italy, or somewhere in Europe, the amendment would prevent the State Department from even considering that person for resettlement to the United States. We would have to tell them sorry, you can't come in, because you are from a place that has terrorists.
"I think back to my family who came to Vermont about 150 years ago. On my father's side, they were Irish. If we had a law like this in place then, it is questionable whether they could have entered this country. If the Irish were fighting to keep their land, if they were fighting to keep their rights, if they were fighting for the ability to vote, and they lived in what is now the Republic of Ireland, they were considered terrorists. We have gone back through the record and found when they left Ireland, even though they had been offered free room and board for the rest of their lives. They were very small rooms, with bars on the windows, and they didn't know that the rest of their lives would come very soon. But they left for Canada, the United States, or Australia.
"I was thinking about the birthday party for Senator Kennedy the other night at the Kennedy Center. There were a number of Irish-Americans there who could speak about their roots, when their families came here, and why they had to leave Ireland to come here. They were hunted because they fought to practice their own religion. They were hunted because they spoke Irish. They were hunted because they wanted to keep their land. They were hunted because they would not renounce their religion. Thank goodness the United States had open arms for them.
"...I hope we don't start doing things that label whole groups of people as terrorists, no matter who they are as individuals."
Leahy concluded by speaking against Amendment 630, noting that two sections of the Budget bill already precluded any assistance to Hamas, and asked of the Kyl amendment, "Do we get extra political points for doing this?" He then tagged his partner and yielded the floor.
Senator Gregg said, "I want to associate myself with the Senator's concern," adding that the Budget resolution itself "made it unalterably clear no money that goes into Gaza can be used for Hamas." He then spoke to the other two Kyl amendments, noting that "on the issue of resettlement of Palestinian refugees, there may be many we would want to come to the United States--maybe physicists and other folks. This blanket approach that nobody can enter the country is really over the top and far too broad a brush to paint on the entire population of an area. ...Thirdly, the issue of the language relative to Egypt concerns me,... There is an ongoing, good-faith effort, as I understand it, by the Government of Egypt to police those borders, using our resources to some degree. Further, Egypt ...is one of our key allies in the sense that it has always been reasonably supportive of what we have tried to do. I think we have a responsibility to be equally supportive of them..."
Final results:
Amendment 629 was withdrawn.
Amendment 630 was defeated 61-34
Amendment 631 was defeated 56-39
Tuesday, the Senate debated three amendments to the Fiscal 2009 Budget, offered by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the first of which (Amendment 629) read: "None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be made available to resettle Palestinians from Gaza into the United States."
There was much head-scratching when the amendment first appeared. Why was it offered, and what was it about? Well, there have been reports on some fringe websites claiming that President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order that would allocate $20.3 million dollars to settle hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza into the U.S - and reached such a frenzy that the internet rumor debunking site snopes.com devoted a page to demonstrating the absurd nature of this claim. (We at AAI spent five minutes on Google and did the same.)
Undeterred, Senator Kyl brought that amendment to the floor yesterday, along with two other anti-Palestinian amendments - one sought to hold up U.S. assistance to Gaza on the pretense of keeping it from Hamas (Amendment 631), and the other dealt with Egypt and arms smuggling into Gaza (Amendment 630). Kyl ran into stiff opposition on all fronts, and it certainly appeared to be organized.
First, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, rose first to speak against Amendments 629 and 630. Noting that he had recently been in Gaza, Egypt and Israel, Kerry called the amendment on Egypt "frankly, not helpful." But it was for the bizarre anti-settlement amendment that he showed true scorn, stating that it "assumes that every resident of Gaza, regardless of age, background, political opinion or any other distinguishing characteristic, is pro-Hamas and ineligible for consideration for resettlement in the United States, even if they are lucky enough to escape from Gaza." He then added, "This amendment, therefore, is not only unnecessary but it would establish for the first time since the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act a law that discriminates against a particular nationality in a particular geographic region."
Kyl then stated that he had written the amendment in "response to a news story," but that he had since been told by the State Department that the story was false, and that he intended "tomorrow to withdraw it." That, however, did not end the debate. [Kyl did in fact withdraw the Amendment today, still claiming that it had been prompted by a "flurry of news stories."
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) rose in a tag-team with Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH). Speaking first, Leahy called Amendment 630 a "public slap in the face...of an ally," and the went on to state:
"[T]he omnibus bill already explicitly authorizes assistance provided to Egypt 'for border security programs and activities in the Sinai.' That was language put in by the distinguished ranking Republican member on the Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Gregg, precisely for the purpose of the Kyl amendment--to enable those funds to be used to help police the border and reduce the smuggling into Gaza. ...I am more interested not in what makes great talking points, but in stopping the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. That is why Senator Gregg put the language into the foreign aid bill in the first place."
Leahy, however, saved his scorn for the Amendment 629. His remarks are worth quoting at length:
"Frankly, it is unnecessary and for the United States, a Nation of immigrants, it goes against everything we stand for.
"We don't resettle anybody from Gaza, nor do we resettle anybody from Gaza who is living in the U.N. refugee camps in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan. The amendment is a solution looking for a problem. If a Palestinian from Gaza gets to a place like Italy, or somewhere in Europe, the amendment would prevent the State Department from even considering that person for resettlement to the United States. We would have to tell them sorry, you can't come in, because you are from a place that has terrorists.
"I think back to my family who came to Vermont about 150 years ago. On my father's side, they were Irish. If we had a law like this in place then, it is questionable whether they could have entered this country. If the Irish were fighting to keep their land, if they were fighting to keep their rights, if they were fighting for the ability to vote, and they lived in what is now the Republic of Ireland, they were considered terrorists. We have gone back through the record and found when they left Ireland, even though they had been offered free room and board for the rest of their lives. They were very small rooms, with bars on the windows, and they didn't know that the rest of their lives would come very soon. But they left for Canada, the United States, or Australia.
"I was thinking about the birthday party for Senator Kennedy the other night at the Kennedy Center. There were a number of Irish-Americans there who could speak about their roots, when their families came here, and why they had to leave Ireland to come here. They were hunted because they fought to practice their own religion. They were hunted because they spoke Irish. They were hunted because they wanted to keep their land. They were hunted because they would not renounce their religion. Thank goodness the United States had open arms for them.
"...I hope we don't start doing things that label whole groups of people as terrorists, no matter who they are as individuals."
Leahy concluded by speaking against Amendment 630, noting that two sections of the Budget bill already precluded any assistance to Hamas, and asked of the Kyl amendment, "Do we get extra political points for doing this?" He then tagged his partner and yielded the floor.
Senator Gregg said, "I want to associate myself with the Senator's concern," adding that the Budget resolution itself "made it unalterably clear no money that goes into Gaza can be used for Hamas." He then spoke to the other two Kyl amendments, noting that "on the issue of resettlement of Palestinian refugees, there may be many we would want to come to the United States--maybe physicists and other folks. This blanket approach that nobody can enter the country is really over the top and far too broad a brush to paint on the entire population of an area. ...Thirdly, the issue of the language relative to Egypt concerns me,... There is an ongoing, good-faith effort, as I understand it, by the Government of Egypt to police those borders, using our resources to some degree. Further, Egypt ...is one of our key allies in the sense that it has always been reasonably supportive of what we have tried to do. I think we have a responsibility to be equally supportive of them..."
Final results:
Amendment 629 was withdrawn.
Amendment 630 was defeated 61-34
Amendment 631 was defeated 56-39
11 March 2009
09 March 2009
Senate Will Vote Tonight!! No Discrimination Against Palestinian Refugees in Gaza
The Senate will vote tonight on Senator Kyl's amendment. The late breaking nature of the amendment means even just a few letters faxed to some key Senators could determine the outcome of this vote.
Add your name to our letter opposing the Kyl amendment and we'll fax it automatically to your Senators' offices.
Background Information
The recent fighting between Israel and Palestinian armed groups (including Hamas) left at least1300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. In addition, schools, universities, mosques and thousands of homes in Gaza were destroyed. In surveying the damages in Gaza, Amnesty International researcher Donatella Rovera said "there is no camera lens wide enough to capture the destruction," adding that Gaza looked like a "moonscape."
The conflict only exacerbated the dismal conditions that were set in place well before the fighting broke out between Israel and Hamas. Hospitals faced severe electrical and supply shortages and some hospitals were only able to function for a few hours a day. Of the estimated 5,000 wounded Palestinians, many have not been able to seek proper medical attention because the facilities in Gaza are inadequate and often the wounded were prevented from entering Egypt or Israel for treatment. Amnesty International also reported that schools have not been able to fully operate because they have not received the paper needed to print textbooks. Employment continues to be a problem with the blockade affecting many factories and other factories being destroyed during the recent conflict. According to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, unemployment in Gaza reached 45% in June 2008, the highest in the world.
The US has taken an important step in pledging $900 million in humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. But some of the aid, such as basic foods supplies like pasta, are still prevented by Israel from entering Gaza, a fact that Senator John Kerry mentioned during his visit to Gaza. Many of the containers of aid are sitting in cargo trucks but because of strict Israeli blockades, Palestinians in Gaza often cannot even access to US funded aid that awaits them just at the border.
The United States is a party to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. All countries that are party to the Convention or its Protocol are obliged to consider claims for refuge without discrimination. The US provides world leadership on refugee issues by refusing to discriminate on the basis of nationality, ethnicity or religion when determining who will be admitted as a refugee. Indeed, the goal of the 1980 Refugee Act sought to assure greater equity in the protection of refugees by repealing the previous law's discriminatory treatment of refugees. Contrary to 30 years of extending protection to refugees on the basis of need, the Kyl amendment seeks to discriminate against an entire group based on nationality alone. Any refugee deemed in need of third country resettlement who meets the criteria of the US refugee program and the security protocols of the Department of Homeland Security should have access to our program irrespective of his or her nationality, ethnicity, or religion.
The Obama administration has taken admirable steps to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including dispatching Middle East envoy George Mitchell on the second day of the new administration. US refugee policy should reflect this positive commitment by refusing to discriminate against Palestinian refugees from Gaza, and considering for resettlement any refugee deemed in need who meets the criteria of the US refugee program and security protocols of the Department of Homeland Security, irrespective of his or her nationality, ethnicity, or religion.
Add your name to our letter opposing the Kyl amendment and we'll fax it automatically to your Senators' offices.
Add your name to our letter opposing the Kyl amendment and we'll fax it automatically to your Senators' offices.
Background Information
The recent fighting between Israel and Palestinian armed groups (including Hamas) left at least1300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. In addition, schools, universities, mosques and thousands of homes in Gaza were destroyed. In surveying the damages in Gaza, Amnesty International researcher Donatella Rovera said "there is no camera lens wide enough to capture the destruction," adding that Gaza looked like a "moonscape."
The conflict only exacerbated the dismal conditions that were set in place well before the fighting broke out between Israel and Hamas. Hospitals faced severe electrical and supply shortages and some hospitals were only able to function for a few hours a day. Of the estimated 5,000 wounded Palestinians, many have not been able to seek proper medical attention because the facilities in Gaza are inadequate and often the wounded were prevented from entering Egypt or Israel for treatment. Amnesty International also reported that schools have not been able to fully operate because they have not received the paper needed to print textbooks. Employment continues to be a problem with the blockade affecting many factories and other factories being destroyed during the recent conflict. According to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, unemployment in Gaza reached 45% in June 2008, the highest in the world.
The US has taken an important step in pledging $900 million in humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. But some of the aid, such as basic foods supplies like pasta, are still prevented by Israel from entering Gaza, a fact that Senator John Kerry mentioned during his visit to Gaza. Many of the containers of aid are sitting in cargo trucks but because of strict Israeli blockades, Palestinians in Gaza often cannot even access to US funded aid that awaits them just at the border.
The United States is a party to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. All countries that are party to the Convention or its Protocol are obliged to consider claims for refuge without discrimination. The US provides world leadership on refugee issues by refusing to discriminate on the basis of nationality, ethnicity or religion when determining who will be admitted as a refugee. Indeed, the goal of the 1980 Refugee Act sought to assure greater equity in the protection of refugees by repealing the previous law's discriminatory treatment of refugees. Contrary to 30 years of extending protection to refugees on the basis of need, the Kyl amendment seeks to discriminate against an entire group based on nationality alone. Any refugee deemed in need of third country resettlement who meets the criteria of the US refugee program and the security protocols of the Department of Homeland Security should have access to our program irrespective of his or her nationality, ethnicity, or religion.
The Obama administration has taken admirable steps to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including dispatching Middle East envoy George Mitchell on the second day of the new administration. US refugee policy should reflect this positive commitment by refusing to discriminate against Palestinian refugees from Gaza, and considering for resettlement any refugee deemed in need who meets the criteria of the US refugee program and security protocols of the Department of Homeland Security, irrespective of his or her nationality, ethnicity, or religion.
Add your name to our letter opposing the Kyl amendment and we'll fax it automatically to your Senators' offices.
08 March 2009
Happy International Women's Day!
This International Women's Day, V-Day is shining an international spotlight on the women and girls of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Today we honor all the activists and women in grassroots women's groups in the DRC - and around the world - who have been fighting for freedom and peace for years. V-Day's efforts in the Congo follow the path these brave women have created and joins with their struggle to realize our common mission to end the subjugation and violence that women have been enduring for centuries. We stand with them as they fight to end the economic war for mineral resources that is being fought on their bodies.
The women and girls of the DRC represent the passion, dedication and courage of the women for which International Women's Day was created. We celebrate the recent victories for women in the DRC: the public "Breaking The Silence" events where women in Goma and Bukavu for the first time stood up in front of their communities and government officials to speak out against their rapes and the impact of violence on their lives; and the historic march through the streets of Bukavu where women took back their lives and their voices to denounce the rampant violence against women in their country.
We are also reminded however of the work ahead of us. We are reminded of the busloads of women arriving daily at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. We are reminded of the girls as young as 8 months old and the women as old as 80 who are raped, sometimes beyond repair. We are reminded of the Doctors and nurses who spend every day caring for and healing women who have literally been torn apart.
The women and girls of the DRC represent the passion, dedication and courage of the women for which International Women's Day was created. We celebrate the recent victories for women in the DRC: the public "Breaking The Silence" events where women in Goma and Bukavu for the first time stood up in front of their communities and government officials to speak out against their rapes and the impact of violence on their lives; and the historic march through the streets of Bukavu where women took back their lives and their voices to denounce the rampant violence against women in their country.
We are also reminded however of the work ahead of us. We are reminded of the busloads of women arriving daily at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. We are reminded of the girls as young as 8 months old and the women as old as 80 who are raped, sometimes beyond repair. We are reminded of the Doctors and nurses who spend every day caring for and healing women who have literally been torn apart.
06 March 2009
War Stories, Cultural Bridge-Building and Sustainability
Chris Turner
February 24, 2009 9:30 AM
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009453.html
Field Notes of an Accidental Eco-Tourist, Part 4: Holiday Reading
I will say this, right off the top, for the Houston airport: it has excellent shopping. Houston was my transit point en route to Costa Rica back in December, and I took advantage of my twelve-hour layover to stock up on some holiday reading. This consisted mostly of spy novels and glossy magazines, but I also decided on a couple of "important books" for the serious side of the docket. Still, I intentionally chose two titles that seemed utterly unrelated to climate and sustainability issues, two books I figured couldn’t possibly push my mind back onto its work track. They were Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War and Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke. A frontline reporter’s account of America’s current military morass and a National Book Award winner offering a fictive window on the last one – nothing at all to do, surely, with building a new kind of social order resilient enough to weather the storms of the Anthropocene Epoch.
Wrong, obviously. The key lessons of Saigon and Baghdad turn out to be all kinds of relevant to the sustainability movement – cautionary tales, in a sense, of how to lose hearts and minds in a change-the-world campaign.
First, though, a bit of background on the titles in question. Now, it’s become all but cliché to suggest that the Bush Administration’s disastrous nation-building invasion of Iraq was a kind of desert-camo remake of the Vietnam War tragedy, but I was amazed, reading The Forever War and Tree of Smoke back to back, by just how fully the themes paralleled each other.
The main narrative arc in Tree of Smoke traces the Southeast Asian careers of a rogue CIA agent named Colonel Sands and his studious, principled nephew, Skip, as they try to inject a new way of thinking into the American military. The Colonel and his nephew have come to realize that democracy is not something that can be airlifted in and that unconventional wars are won not by superior firepower but essentially by superior empathy. The Colonel lectures repeatedly on the need to learn the Vietnamese people’s myths, to “tell their stories and sing their songs,” to first understand who these people are before presuming to tell them how to live. It spoils nothing for those who haven’t yet read the novel, I’m guessing, if I note simply that the empathetic Sands approach is doomed to be trampled underfoot by the domino-theorizing Cold Warriors of America’s Vietnam-Era military.
Skip ahead a generation, and The Forever War finds another pack of ideologues airlifting another army of hundreds of thousands into another nation whose songs and stories are as alien to your average American soldier (or strategist) as Vietnam’s were. Filkins’ tale begins in Taliban-era Afghanistan before moving on for an extended stay in Baghdad and a hyper-realistic march through Fallujah. Throughout, Filkins describes a startlingly consistent deficiency in local intelligence among the American military ranks – a near-total absence of Arab-speaking translators, the utter inability of decision-makers to notice (as he eventually does) that the Iraqis, whether friendly or hostile, invariably tell one set of stories to the Americans and an entirely different one among themselves. In one particularly troubling series of scenes immediately after the fall of Baghdad, an Iraqi doctor turns a mob of would-be looters away from his hospital doors with a single warning shot, while elsewhere in the anarchic city an entire platoon of U.S. Marines conducts impotent precision drill in front of another looting party, awaiting an order that never comes to secure critical nearby government buildings. Ignorant seemingly of even the basic instinctual sense of how to control the country they’d conquered, the American military engaged in little more than a pantomime of order.
“You had to accept your ignorance,” Filkins writes of his sojourn in Iraq; “it was the beginning of whatever wisdom you could hope to muster.”
This statement could serve as the one-line thesis for both books, and reading them together on an accidental eco-tourist’s holiday, it struck me as a powerful lesson to keep in mind as the sustainability movement marches forward. There is a sense, among those of us working toward a new, sustainable world order resilient enough to survive in the Anthropocene, that we are beginning anew. Abandoning a ruined social order, casting off outmoded ideologies. “Starting from zero,” as the artists and thinkers of Europe’s modernist vanguard used to say. Sure, we enthuse about green retrofits and revel in the inherited livability of old walkable downtowns, but there is ultimately – and I would argue necessarily – a sort of fundamental reboot at the core of the sustainability project. Small, incremental changes aren’t going to cut it. The thing needs re-engineering from the ground up.
I’m thinking, for example, of the Outquisition idea we talk about often here, which is predicated on the idea that there is a wide stratum of industrial society whose way of life is in dramatic and inexorable decline. It’s a solid argument and a fine way to begin structuring the process of renewal, but it needs to be carefully entwined with Filkins’ point about accepting your ignorance and Johnson’s doomed protagonists’ belief in the primacy of myth, song and story. Take the crusade, indeed, to the ruins of the unsustainable, but remember that there is still a culture there – a sacred thing to some no matter how outmoded or doomed it might seem – and it will not change dramatically at the behest of anyone who can’t speak its language.
I’m thinking of a conversation I had with Adam Werbach awhile back about his work with Wal-Mart – a bold headfirst leap into the ruins of the unsustainable if ever there was one. Werbach’s first job as a Wal-Mart consultant has been to conduct sustainability training seminars for the company’s legions of employees, to get them thinking about and embracing the core principles of sustainability. When Werbach, formerly the old-guard environmental movement’s self-appointed wunderkind, first started that controversial gig, he reckoned he was the green redeemer, come to liberate the poor working stiffs from their big-box prisons. He soon learned otherwise, and he took to structuring his seminars not as lectures but as dialogues that began with a simple question: What does sustainability mean to you?
Werbach was, in a sense, asking these people for their songs and stories, and then beginning to weave his own agenda into what he was told. It’s the right starting line for any nation-building exercise, sustainable or otherwise.
Chris Turner is the author of The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, a global tour of the state of the art in sustainable living. He lives in Calgary. He keeps a poorly maintained blog and can be reached by email at cturner [at] globeandmail [dot] com.
Click Here To Read Part 3: Real Sustainable Tourism In Embryo
Click Here To Read Part 2: The Moai Of Costa Rica’s Central Pacific
Click Here To Read Part 1: Does Eco-Tourism Matter?
February 24, 2009 9:30 AM
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009453.html
Field Notes of an Accidental Eco-Tourist, Part 4: Holiday Reading
I will say this, right off the top, for the Houston airport: it has excellent shopping. Houston was my transit point en route to Costa Rica back in December, and I took advantage of my twelve-hour layover to stock up on some holiday reading. This consisted mostly of spy novels and glossy magazines, but I also decided on a couple of "important books" for the serious side of the docket. Still, I intentionally chose two titles that seemed utterly unrelated to climate and sustainability issues, two books I figured couldn’t possibly push my mind back onto its work track. They were Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War and Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke. A frontline reporter’s account of America’s current military morass and a National Book Award winner offering a fictive window on the last one – nothing at all to do, surely, with building a new kind of social order resilient enough to weather the storms of the Anthropocene Epoch.
Wrong, obviously. The key lessons of Saigon and Baghdad turn out to be all kinds of relevant to the sustainability movement – cautionary tales, in a sense, of how to lose hearts and minds in a change-the-world campaign.
First, though, a bit of background on the titles in question. Now, it’s become all but cliché to suggest that the Bush Administration’s disastrous nation-building invasion of Iraq was a kind of desert-camo remake of the Vietnam War tragedy, but I was amazed, reading The Forever War and Tree of Smoke back to back, by just how fully the themes paralleled each other.
The main narrative arc in Tree of Smoke traces the Southeast Asian careers of a rogue CIA agent named Colonel Sands and his studious, principled nephew, Skip, as they try to inject a new way of thinking into the American military. The Colonel and his nephew have come to realize that democracy is not something that can be airlifted in and that unconventional wars are won not by superior firepower but essentially by superior empathy. The Colonel lectures repeatedly on the need to learn the Vietnamese people’s myths, to “tell their stories and sing their songs,” to first understand who these people are before presuming to tell them how to live. It spoils nothing for those who haven’t yet read the novel, I’m guessing, if I note simply that the empathetic Sands approach is doomed to be trampled underfoot by the domino-theorizing Cold Warriors of America’s Vietnam-Era military.
Skip ahead a generation, and The Forever War finds another pack of ideologues airlifting another army of hundreds of thousands into another nation whose songs and stories are as alien to your average American soldier (or strategist) as Vietnam’s were. Filkins’ tale begins in Taliban-era Afghanistan before moving on for an extended stay in Baghdad and a hyper-realistic march through Fallujah. Throughout, Filkins describes a startlingly consistent deficiency in local intelligence among the American military ranks – a near-total absence of Arab-speaking translators, the utter inability of decision-makers to notice (as he eventually does) that the Iraqis, whether friendly or hostile, invariably tell one set of stories to the Americans and an entirely different one among themselves. In one particularly troubling series of scenes immediately after the fall of Baghdad, an Iraqi doctor turns a mob of would-be looters away from his hospital doors with a single warning shot, while elsewhere in the anarchic city an entire platoon of U.S. Marines conducts impotent precision drill in front of another looting party, awaiting an order that never comes to secure critical nearby government buildings. Ignorant seemingly of even the basic instinctual sense of how to control the country they’d conquered, the American military engaged in little more than a pantomime of order.
“You had to accept your ignorance,” Filkins writes of his sojourn in Iraq; “it was the beginning of whatever wisdom you could hope to muster.”
This statement could serve as the one-line thesis for both books, and reading them together on an accidental eco-tourist’s holiday, it struck me as a powerful lesson to keep in mind as the sustainability movement marches forward. There is a sense, among those of us working toward a new, sustainable world order resilient enough to survive in the Anthropocene, that we are beginning anew. Abandoning a ruined social order, casting off outmoded ideologies. “Starting from zero,” as the artists and thinkers of Europe’s modernist vanguard used to say. Sure, we enthuse about green retrofits and revel in the inherited livability of old walkable downtowns, but there is ultimately – and I would argue necessarily – a sort of fundamental reboot at the core of the sustainability project. Small, incremental changes aren’t going to cut it. The thing needs re-engineering from the ground up.
I’m thinking, for example, of the Outquisition idea we talk about often here, which is predicated on the idea that there is a wide stratum of industrial society whose way of life is in dramatic and inexorable decline. It’s a solid argument and a fine way to begin structuring the process of renewal, but it needs to be carefully entwined with Filkins’ point about accepting your ignorance and Johnson’s doomed protagonists’ belief in the primacy of myth, song and story. Take the crusade, indeed, to the ruins of the unsustainable, but remember that there is still a culture there – a sacred thing to some no matter how outmoded or doomed it might seem – and it will not change dramatically at the behest of anyone who can’t speak its language.
I’m thinking of a conversation I had with Adam Werbach awhile back about his work with Wal-Mart – a bold headfirst leap into the ruins of the unsustainable if ever there was one. Werbach’s first job as a Wal-Mart consultant has been to conduct sustainability training seminars for the company’s legions of employees, to get them thinking about and embracing the core principles of sustainability. When Werbach, formerly the old-guard environmental movement’s self-appointed wunderkind, first started that controversial gig, he reckoned he was the green redeemer, come to liberate the poor working stiffs from their big-box prisons. He soon learned otherwise, and he took to structuring his seminars not as lectures but as dialogues that began with a simple question: What does sustainability mean to you?
Werbach was, in a sense, asking these people for their songs and stories, and then beginning to weave his own agenda into what he was told. It’s the right starting line for any nation-building exercise, sustainable or otherwise.
Chris Turner is the author of The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, a global tour of the state of the art in sustainable living. He lives in Calgary. He keeps a poorly maintained blog and can be reached by email at cturner [at] globeandmail [dot] com.
Click Here To Read Part 3: Real Sustainable Tourism In Embryo
Click Here To Read Part 2: The Moai Of Costa Rica’s Central Pacific
Click Here To Read Part 1: Does Eco-Tourism Matter?
10 Things You Should Know About Obama's Plan
Want to see what change looks like? Real change?
Well, here it is. Last week, President Obama unveiled his budget—his blueprint for America—and it's ambitious, amazing, and unapologetically progressive. As Paul Krugman said, it will set America on a "fundamentally new course."1
President Obama called his budget "a threat to the status quo," and trust me, the status quo noticed. Oil companies, big banks and insurance companies are already mobilizing to stop it.2
Unfortunately, most folks don't realize how far-reaching and progressive the plan is—that's where we all come in.
Here are 10 really incredible things about Obama's plan. Check them out and then send them on to your friends and family so that millions of people will have the information they need to fight to make this vision a reality.
10 things you should know about Obama's plan (but probably don't)
The plan:
Makes a $634 billion down payment on fixing health care that will go a long way toward paying for a more efficient, more affordable health care system that covers every single American.3
Reduces taxes for 95% of working Americans. And if your family makes less than $250,000, your taxes won't go up one dime.4
Invests more than $100 billion in clean energy technology, creating millions of green jobs that can never be outsourced.5
Brings our troops home from Iraq on a firm timetable, finally bringing the war to a close—and freeing up almost ten billion dollars a month for domestic priorities.6
Reverses growing income inequality. The plan lets the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire and focuses on strengthening the middle class.7
Closes multi-billion-dollar tax loopholes for big oil companies. 8
Increases grants to help families pay for college—the largest increase ever.9
Halves the deficit by 2013. President Obama inherited a legacy of huge deficits and an economy in shambles, but his plan brings the deficit under control as soon as the economy begins to recover.10
Dramatically increases funding for the SEC and the CFTC—the agencies that police Wall Street.11
Tells it straight. For years, budgets have used accounting tricks to hide the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, and too many other programs. Obama's budget gets rid of the smokescreens and lays out what America's priorities are, what they cost, and how we're going to pay for them.12
This is the change we voted for. President Obama has done his part, now we need to do ours.
Well, here it is. Last week, President Obama unveiled his budget—his blueprint for America—and it's ambitious, amazing, and unapologetically progressive. As Paul Krugman said, it will set America on a "fundamentally new course."1
President Obama called his budget "a threat to the status quo," and trust me, the status quo noticed. Oil companies, big banks and insurance companies are already mobilizing to stop it.2
Unfortunately, most folks don't realize how far-reaching and progressive the plan is—that's where we all come in.
Here are 10 really incredible things about Obama's plan. Check them out and then send them on to your friends and family so that millions of people will have the information they need to fight to make this vision a reality.
10 things you should know about Obama's plan (but probably don't)
The plan:
Makes a $634 billion down payment on fixing health care that will go a long way toward paying for a more efficient, more affordable health care system that covers every single American.3
Reduces taxes for 95% of working Americans. And if your family makes less than $250,000, your taxes won't go up one dime.4
Invests more than $100 billion in clean energy technology, creating millions of green jobs that can never be outsourced.5
Brings our troops home from Iraq on a firm timetable, finally bringing the war to a close—and freeing up almost ten billion dollars a month for domestic priorities.6
Reverses growing income inequality. The plan lets the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire and focuses on strengthening the middle class.7
Closes multi-billion-dollar tax loopholes for big oil companies. 8
Increases grants to help families pay for college—the largest increase ever.9
Halves the deficit by 2013. President Obama inherited a legacy of huge deficits and an economy in shambles, but his plan brings the deficit under control as soon as the economy begins to recover.10
Dramatically increases funding for the SEC and the CFTC—the agencies that police Wall Street.11
Tells it straight. For years, budgets have used accounting tricks to hide the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, and too many other programs. Obama's budget gets rid of the smokescreens and lays out what America's priorities are, what they cost, and how we're going to pay for them.12
This is the change we voted for. President Obama has done his part, now we need to do ours.
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