Two Myths that Keep the World Poor

Two myths that keep the world poor
Vandana Shiva
This article appeared in Ode issue: 28

Global poverty is a hot topic right now. But anyone serious about ending it needs to understand the true causes, argues Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva.

From rock singer Bob Geldof to UK politician Gordon Brown, the world suddenly seems to be full of high-profile people with their own plans to end poverty. Jeffrey Sachs, however, is not a simply a do-gooder but one of the world’s leading economists, head of the Earth Institute and in charge of a UN panel set up to promote rapid development. So when he launched his book The End of Poverty, people everywhere took notice. Time magazine even made it into a cover story.But, there is a problem with Sachs’ how-to-end poverty prescriptions. He simply doesn’t understand where poverty comes from. He seems to view it as the original sin. “A few generations ago, almost everybody was poor,” he writes, then adding: “The Industrial Revolution led to new riches, but much of the world was left far behind.” This is a totally false history of poverty. The poor are not those who have been “left behind”; they are the ones who have been robbed. The wealth accumulated by Europe and North America are largely based on riches taken from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Without the destruction of India’s rich textile industry, without the takeover of the spice trade, without the genocide of the native American tribes, without African slavery, the Industrial Revolution would not have resulted in new riches for Europe or North America. It was this violent takeover of Third World resources and markets that created wealth in the North and poverty in the South.

Two of the great economic myths of our time allow people to deny this intimate link, and spread misconceptions about what poverty is. First, the destruction of nature and of people’s ability to look after themselves are blamed not on industrial growth and economic colonialism, but on poor people themselves. Poverty, it is stated, causes environmental destruction. The disease is then offered as a cure: further economic growth is supposed to solve the very problems of poverty and ecological decline that it gave rise to in the first place. This is the message at the heart of Sachs’ analysis. The second myth is an assumption that if you consume what you produce, you do not really produce, at least not economically speaking. If I grow my own food, and do not sell it, then it doesn’t contribute to GDP, and therefore does not contribute towards “growth”.

People are perceived as “poor” if they eat food they have grown rather than commercially distributed junk foods sold by global agri-business. They are seen as poor if they live in self-built housing made from ecologically well-adapted materials like bamboo and mud rather than in cinder block or cement houses. They are seen as poor if they wear garments manufactured from handmade natural fibres rather than synthetics. Yet sustenance living, which the wealthy West perceives as poverty, does not necessarily mean a low quality of life. On the contrary, by their very nature economies based on sustenance ensure a high quality of life—when measured in terms of access to good food and water, opportunities for sustainable livelihoods, robust social and cultural identity, and a sense of meaning in people’s lives . Because these poor don’t share in the perceived benefits of economic growth, however, they are portrayed as those “left behind”. This false distinction between the factors that create affluence and those that create poverty is at the core of Sachs’ analysis. And because of this, his prescriptions will aggravate and deepen poverty instead of ending it. Modern concepts of economic development, which Sachs sees as the “cure” for poverty, have been in place for only a tiny portion of human history. For centuries, the principles of sustenance allowed societies all over the planet to survive and even thrive. Limits in nature were respected in these societies and guided the limits of human consumption. When society’s relationship with nature is based on sustenance, nature exists as a form of common wealth. It is redefined as a “resource” only when profit becomes the organising principle of society and sets off a financial imperative for the development and destruction of these resources for the market. However much we choose to forget or deny it, all people in all societies still depend on nature. Without clean water, fertile soils and genetic diversity, human survival is not possible. Today, economic development is destroying these onetime commons, resulting in the creation of a new contradiction: development deprives the very people it professes to help of their traditional land and means of sustenance, forcing them to survive in an increasingly eroded natural world.

A system like the economic growth model we know today creates trillions of dollars of super profits for corporations while condemning billions of people to poverty. Poverty is not, as Sachs suggests, an initial state of human progress from which to escape. It is a final state people fall into when one-sided development destroys the ecological and social systems that have maintained the life, health and sustenance of people and the planet for ages. The reality is that people do not die for lack of income. They die for lack of access to the wealth of the commons. Here, too, Sachs is wrong when he says: “In a world of plenty, 1 billion people are so poor their lives are in danger.” The indigenous people in the Amazon, the mountain communities in the Himalayas, peasants anywhere whose land has not been appropriated and whose water and biodiversity have not been destroyed by debt-creating industrial agriculture are ecologically rich, even though they earn less than a dollar a day. On the other hand, people are poor if they have to purchase their basic needs at high prices no matter how much income they make. Take the case of India. Because of cheap food and fibre being dumped by developed nations and lessened trade protections enacted by the government, farm prices in India are tumbling, which means that the country’s peasants are losing $26 billion U.S. each year. Unable to survive under these new economic conditions, many peasants are now poverty-stricken and thousands commit suicide each year. Elsewhere in the world, drinking water is privatised so that corporations can now profit to the tune of $1 trillion U.S. a year by selling an essential resource to the poor that was once free. And the $50 billion U.S. of “aid” trickling North to South is but a tenth of the $500 billion being sucked in the other direction due to interest payments and other unjust mechanisms in the global economy imposed by the World Bank and the IMF. If we are serious about ending poverty, we have to be serious about ending the systems that create poverty by robbing the poor of their common wealth, livelihoods and incomes. Before we can make poverty history, we need to get the history of poverty right. It’s not about how much wealthy nations can give, so much as how much less they can take.

Taken and adapted with kind permission from The Ecologist (July/August 2005), a British monthly devoted to discussion of environmental issues, international politics and globalization. More information: The Ecologist, Unit 18 Chelsea Wharf, 15 Lots Road, London, SW10 0XJ, England, theecologist@galleon.co.uk, www.theecologist.org

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist and prominent Indian environmental activist. She founded Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. Her most recent books are Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge and Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply.

Lighting a Million Mornings for Street Children

First posted 11:08pm (Mla time) Dec 25, 2005 By Antonio C. HilaInquirer Editor's Note: Published on page D2 of the December 26, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

CHILDREN WILL STAGE A concert to bring light and restore hope to the lives of their fellow children. The Loboc Children's Choir and the Pundaquit Virtuosi will fuse their talents in a joint concert at 8 p.m., Jan. 6-7, 2006, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines' Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo Hall.The show will benefit some 650 children of the Tuloy sa Don Bosco Streetchildren Village which rehabilitates street children, providing them with free shelter, basic education, medical services, counseling and therapy, and vocational skills. The founder is under the stewardship of Fr. Rocky Evangelista, SDB.The concert will also feature two former child prodigies, both celebrated virtuoso violinists, Alfonso "Coke" Bolipata and Julian "Jojo" Quirit.Bolipata conducts the Punduaquit Virtuosi while Quirit leads the Australian Pops Orchestra. The latter's daughter, Eliza Quirit, also a violin prodigy, will be soloist.Singer-actress Cris Villongco is special guest performer.Veteran stage and television director Leo Rialp directs the concert while musician Danny Favis is musical arranger. The two, who waived their professional fees for this benefit concert, are out to make a rare presentation.In a press conference at the Bellevue Hotel in Ayala-Alabang, emceed by Iya de los Santos, the organizers, called Fr. Rocky's "Angels," stressed the importance of the project.The businessmen, many of them members of the Rotary Club, commended Fr. Rocky's total approach to helping the kids, who accounted for only a small fraction of the estimated 200,000 street children in Metro Manila, instead of adopting "band-aid" remedies.The organizers are, among others, Lily Chan, Chinggay Rode, Cora del Rosario, Corito Sarabia, Pollie de los Santos, Edwin Afzelius, Christian Espiritu, Carlos Pedrosa, David Coyiukiat, Tony Lucero, Jun Manas, Jun Umali, Johnny Chan and his sons Ryan and Patrick.Fr. Antonio Molavin, SDB, who represented Fr. Evangelista, said at "Tuloy" the children underwent complete transformation. Bolipata and Lutgardo Labad, who was involved with the Loboc choir, expressed excitement over the collaboration of their groups for a noble, humanitarian cause.Rialp said the program would be "very entertaining." He planned to let Tuloy children join in some numbers.The Loboc Children's Choir, conducted by Alma Fernando-Taldo with Baby Lina Jala on the piano, rendered some songs with cherubic charm that tugged at the hearts of the listeners especially when they did the concert theme song, "Light of a Million Mornings Has Dawned on Me."The Pundaquit Virtuosi played with youthful zest Baroque pieces that included "Summer" from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons."Tickets to the concert are available at the CCP Box Office, Hen-Lin Food Outlets and Sarabia Optical stores. Call 0906-5273079 or 0918-9128787.

this illusion

if an owl visits you in a dream, along with a maze of stairways, and a yellow haired baby since you were fifteen,

then watching the vintage 1986 classic Labyrinth on a winter solstice is no accident.

little boys i met today

selling cigarettes
lost, crying in a bookstore, waiting for his brother
and if last week counts, a ten year old teaching me to make an owl origami the next day after an owl's visit
and a lotus flower which a gave to a nine year old on his birthday.

Funny Wisdom

The film reminds me so much of the wisdom in Alice in Wonderland cross the wit and aura of the Princess Bride. David Bowie was perfect for the role of Jareth, the villain or anima of Sarah ( ah, the name - yes, unfortunately and fortunately, since last year, december 12, i wish i had a different name like Maya or Katherine or Tala anything that doesn't make me hate myself).




"I'll lay my love, between the stars " - notice the monster between them :O



THE LABYRINTH - The Centre of the Universe
The Labyrinth is a dizzy, huge maze that surrounds Jareth’s castle. It is Sarah’s inner psyche and it is in constant turmoil. She must get to the very center of her heart and find Jareth there. But she cannot go straight to him, for there are too many layers, fantasies and illusions that keep them apart. The reward is not in finding Jareth, but in getting to him and getting him out. This world is too confusing. Why is a movie that tries to teach you not to be slave turn you into one? Would you have neede this labyrinth so much if you had never known what it was? Truth is, everyone always had one on the inside. Sooner or later something has to bring it out.




where i find myself

WISEMAN: OH. WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?
SARAH: I MUST GET TO THE CASTLE
SARAH: AT THE CENTER OF THE LABYRINTH.
SARAH: DO YOU KNOW THE WAY?
WISEMAN: AH.
HAT: AH.
WISEMAN: EH?
HAT: EH?
WISEMAN: OH, YES. HUH.
WISEMAN: YOU WANT TO GET TO THE CASTLE?
HAT: HOW'S THAT FOR BRAINPOWER, HUH?
WISEMAN: BE QUIET!
HAT: AW, NUTS.
WISEMAN: SO, YOUNG WOMAN,
WISEMAN: THE WAY FORWARD IS SOMETIMES THE WAY BACK.
HAT: AYE!
HAT: WILL YOU LISTEN TO THIS CRAP!
WISEMAN: WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET!
HAT: ALL RIGHT.
WISEMAN: OK?
HAT: OK.
WISEMAN: ALL RIGHT.
HAT: ALL RIGHT. SORRY.
WISEMAN: FINISHED?
HAT: YES.
WISEMAN: QUITE OFTEN, YOUNG LADY,
WISEMAN: IT SEEMS LIKE WE'RE NOT GETTING ANYWHERE,
WISEMAN: WHEN, IN FACT...
HAT: WE ARE.
WISEMAN: WE ARE.
SARAH: I'M NOT GETTING ANYWHERE
SARAH: AT THE MOMENT.
HAT: HA! JOIN THE CLUB!

-------------
for G , please return my book

Lost in WTO Translation

Im not really a hardcore activist - I like making change in small ways. I don't like keeping myself angry or opposed to anything, I prefer to do something instead of just complaining or finding fault. Although I feel that this is the role I perfectly fit in, I think its also important to educate oneself about the bigger things ( of course this is differnt from the absolute and universal matters or non-matter if you understand what i mean or don't mean) - we should also be aware about worldly matters that affect everybody such as the recently concluded WTO summit. I suck at economics, in fact I failed ECO 101 with a professor who thought that Eco 101 Economic Theories was all about computations. ( Please do not take Mrs. Macam's Eco 101 class in Ateneo if you really want to learn about Economics). Anyway to cut it short, the WTO is not really my thing and personally the word WTO is a wound that throbs brightly in red but I know it affects all sectors, even the smallest grassroots organization in the far flung provinces and even our very own lifestyles. I know the summit just ended yesterday but until trade becomes fair, WTO is still an issue for everyone. I checked out some sites to get acquainted with the WTO jargon, its history, why it affects us so much et al. Here are some sites for those who are "Lost in the WTO Translation" aka WTO for Dummies like me :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization - Wikipedia's entry on WTO - the simplest introduction, no frills

www.maketradefair.com - this is part of OXFAM's Join the Big Noise campaign. Clear information about WTO. good site for the lazy inquirer.

If you want to learn more....

www.indymedia.org - updates about the WTO protests. Protestors from people's organizations, farmers, fisherfolk, environmental activitists have flocked to HK since early December to remind the WTO panel and delegates about their plight for fair trade.
www.resistwto.blogspot.com - Resist WTO! is a network of groups, organizations and movements opposed to the World Trade Organization. The network rejects imperialist plunder and war that is facilitated by the WTO. This involves local POs and militant groups like Bayan Muna, Anakpawis and Gabriela.

WHAT WE CAN DO :

a) BUY FILIPINO, but note that there are locally made products run by Multinational Brands that dont practice ethical capitalism ( i know i know this term is questionable hahaha).
b) BUY ECO-FRIENDLY PRODUTS - check your labels. Organic is best since there is no pollution through pesticides. some products have Environment Friendly signs labeled. Companies that produce products with pollutants also pollute our water systems, some dump their waste at sea. By patronizing polluting products, you add to the pollution.
c) BUY FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS. Fair trade coffee, fair trade sneakers, et al, again, check your labels
d) this only means, BEING AN ETHICAL CONSUMER trying not to buy pirated or extraordinarily cheap bargains from divisoria or quiapo or other bargain markets since most of the products being sold are made in sweat shops and likely runs production with child labor. If you can avoid buying, then good. i know its tough especially since we are a developing country and we thrive on cheap goods from China or other Asian countries. There are also big brand names that satelite their factories in developing countries and run in poor working conditions and low pay. Check out the brands you patronize. Perhaps the best practice is to CONSUME LESS.
e) if you buy from local Indegenous Peoples or bazaars that showcase products from grassroots cooperatives, ngo's, best not to ask for a cheaper price ( "tumawad"). PAYING FOR THE RIGHT PRICE sustains their livelihood and their cause.
f) AVOID WASTE as well, because part of trade issues is about dumping of wastes. DONATE your old stuff, give them away, buy longer lasting products as well so you reduce waste.

Bottomline, BE A CONSCIOUS CONSUMER.

READ THE LABELS, KNOW WHERE IT COMES FROM - WHOSE HANDS MAKE IT, KNOW THE INGREDIENTS, KNOW WHERE AND HOW IT ENDS UP AFTER YOU'VE CONSUMED IT.

Read more about the issue. Relate the issue to how it affects you and others. Because obviously, it does.

What is FAIR TRADE?
Fair Trade involves the following principles:

Producers receive a fair price - a living wage. For commodities, farmers receive a stable, minimum price. Forced labor and exploitative child labor are not allowed
Buyers and producers trade under direct long-term relationships
Producers have access to financial and technical assistance
Sustainable production techniques are encouraged
Working conditions are healthy and safe
Equal employment opportunities are provided for all
All aspects of trade and production are open to public accountability

Know more about Fair Trade
Sign the Petition to Make Trade Fair

dream job/project #2

I know I posted this before but since im still in the dream job/wishlist mode and im on fullforce with the proposal writing stage of the museum's community art projects Ive been thinking of putting up something like this - adapting it to art in public schools. I worked with this paper and book artist Loreto Apilado at the museum and he runs livelihood programs so maybe i better have coffee with him soon on this idea. He also makes my wonderful journals by hand :) Anyway, read on... I re posted this for myself to read whenever i log on. Mabuhay ang mga Cebuano/a! :)


Garing National High School converts trash to cash
By Aurelia l. Castro Thursday, March 24, 2005
STUDENTS of Garing National High School (GNHS) of Consolacion town in Cebu save and make money by producing their own writing paper out of waste paper. This project was spearheaded by the local government and school officials in 1997. Despite the school’s lack of equipment, like shredder, cutter and grinder, students were able to produce handmade paper using their own creativity and improvised tools under the supervision of science teacher Rizza Palang and technology and livelihood education teacher Florencio Cortez. Following a simple process, they shred waste paper into tiny pieces and soak them in the water to soften them. They pound the pulp and put this into the molder, smoothen it with a roller and let it dry. Finally, the handmade, chemical-free paper is removed, ready for use—without any cost except for the waste paper as its main material. “The finished products are not only good for writing but they are also compatible with computer printing,” Palang said. GNHS, which has 200 students and six teachers, has 20 computer units acquired from the Department of Trade and Industry’s PCs (Personal Computers) for Public High Schools Project. Palang said students ask for used paper in school. After teachers check the students’ paperwork, the students get the sheets of paper and recycle them. This project has had immense effects, according to Palang and Cortez. First, it means no trash. Second, it helps students save money since they won’t have to go downtown and buy paper. Third, it develops the entrepreneurial skills of students because they learn to produce and sell. Small school Who would think that a small school a 15-minute drive up the mountain from the downtown of Conso-lacion would one day grab attention? For its implementation of a practical and environment-friendly project, GNHS won for itself a P200,000 Henry Ford conservation and environmental grant last January. The grant is a legacy of the late American automobile maker Henry Ford, known to be an environmentalist during his time. With the support of Solid Waste Center, GNHS will use the grant to build a separate center for paper making in GNHS. They are currently doing the paper production at their science laboratory donated by the Aboitiz Group Foundation Inc. “We are also recognized and supported by the Committee on Education of the Consolacion local government. They will soon propose this project to be implemented and promoted in other schools in Conso-lacion and eventually in the whole province of Cebu,” Cortez said. For now, the school’s student organization sells the recycled paper to classmates who don’t make their own paper. The school requires all students to use handmade paper. In three months, they can earn P1,000. They plan to sell their paper in the town once they can increase production. But this will require equipment.

God Takes the Pain Away

why not try if you don't believe it?
The same goes when we talk to plants and praise them - studies reveal that plants spoken to with good words, praises turn out to be much healthier than plants isolated and watered with negative comments.

God takes the pain away
OHIO. God can help you cope with pain, according to a recent study conducted with college students, who were randomly divided into three groups. For two weeks one group was instructed to meditate by repeating phrases like “God is love” or “God is peace”; a second group meditated on phrases such as “I am happy”; a third group was told simply to relax. Researchers tested the participants’ tolerance for pain by measuring how long they were able to hold their hands under water at a temperature of 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit). The result? The group that focused on God registered more of an ability to tolerate pain: an average of 92 seconds against 49 seconds for the third group. In New Scientist (September 3, 2005), head researcher Amy Wachholtz, a Ph.D. student at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said spiritual meditation may have unique qualities, although she couldn’t say what they were exactly. A similar discovery was made by Yakir Kaufman, director of neurological services at Sarah Herzog Memorial Hospital in Jerusalem, who observed that religious Alzheimer’s patients made more progress than their secular counterparts. The patients who regressed more slowly were also the ones who prayed more and frequently attended religious services (church, synagogue, mosque), said Kaufman at this spring’s annual American Academy of Neurology convention in Florida.

from www.odemagazine.com

´Mad Cow Disease'

Sculpture by Jens Galschiot of Denmark entitled ´Mad Cow Disease'

is hung in Victoria Park, Hong Kong

A sculpture by Jens Galschiot of Denmark entitled ´Mad Cow Disease' is hung in Victoria Park, Hong Kong December 15, 2005. The structure consists of a nine-metre (29.5 feet) high pair of scales with a stuffed cow in one arm and five starving African children in the other. According to the artist's press release, the sculpture symbolizes how the rich world is using five times the amount of their development aid to support their own agriculture. Trade ministers from nearly 150 countries will try to break a deadlock in troubled global talks on Thursday, amid U.S. and European sniping over farm subsidies, food aid and measures to help the world's poorest.
REUTERS/LEE JAE-WON
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/pictures/HKG104D2.htm

I know this does not have any direct connection ...but you see, if all of the land used for cattle grazing were converted to grow vegetables and crops ( meaning, if the world's population converts to vegetarianism), then we could feed most of the world's hungry! But yes, the sculptor's statement is true. Also, please note the global priorities as of 1998 ( i have yet to find the updated version - im sure the military spending shot up to trillions... :O )

Global Priority in $U.S. Billions

Basic education for everyone in the world - $6B
Cosmetics in the United States - $8B
Water and sanitation for everyone in the world - $9B
Ice cream in Europe - $11B
Reproductive health for all women in the world - $12B
Perfumes in Europe and the United States - $12B
Basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world - $13B
Pet foods in Europe and the United States - $17B
Business entertainment in Japan - $35
Cigarettes in Europe - $ 50 B
Alcoholic drinks in Europe - $105 B
Narcotics drugs in the world - $400B
Military spending in the world - $780B

dream job - #1

If I wasn't working full time, I would be doing something like this ...( what i like about this blog is that i can dare to dream hahahaaaalalalaaaa did daaaaa) :)

Letter from an Artist: Catching Magic in the Los Padillas Water Catchment Project
By Chrissie Orr

October 11, 2004: from the journal of Chrissie Orr, Santa Fe, New Mexico. And it is raining.

If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in the water. — Loren Eisley
Thousands have lived with out love, not one without water. —W. H. Auden
Humanity has not only lost touch with the spiritual nature of water, but is now in danger of losing its very physical substance. —Theodor Schwenk


It all started with a message on the kitchen answering machine. It was John’s voice. “How would you like to do another water-catchment project, but this time build it? I have money for you.” I stood and listened to it twice. How often does this happen to an artist? I had not hustled this, I had not spent hours struggling over a proposal, I had just mentioned to my friend John that I would like to expand a project we had worked on together the previous summer.
John McLeod is one of those renaissance human beings, with a visionary mind and incredible energy who loves to get his hands in the mud. He is, among many other wonders, the coordinator of “Bridging to the Arts,” http://www.bridgingtothearts.org/ an innovative arts program developed for youth summer projects in New Mexico.

In the summer of 2003, John hired me to drive to 17 sites around the state — from Ship Rock on the Navajo Nation to Sunland Park on the U.S./Mexico border to the war zone (so called because of frequent gang shooting) in Albuquerque – where I ran school workshops on the intrigues and mysteries of catching water in the arid southwest. The students became inventors and we designed hundreds of different catchment systems, many of which Rube Goldberg would have loved. At the end of the summer, as John and I worked together to produce a book of the designs, we both came to the conclusion that some of the concepts should have been built, hence the message on my answering machine.

Now, a year later, I would work with another group of kids, design a water catchment system and actually build it. Of course, as everybody in this field knows, nothing is as easy as it appears.
The project, or rather the funding, was directed over to the Rio Grande Educational Collaborative in Albuquerque. They picked a site called Los Padillas in the south Rio Grande valley — hotter than hell in the summer and swarming with mosquitoes. I did not hear from anyone until a week before they wanted the project to start. Then I had to get fingerprinted for a background check before they would let me work with the kids, standard operating procedure in the Albuquerque School District. You will be pleased to know that I passed.

I hustled a budget together, worked out a schedule, put out the word that I was looking for an intern/assistant. I contacted Ann Nelson, a landscape designer who specializes in designing for kids, and Richard Jennings, a water engineer-cum-visionary inventor, and convinced them that they could fit in a few hours to their busy schedules to come and work with me. I ran in circles, panicked a few a times, designed workshops and bought materials, and eventually all the pieces began to fall into place.

It was about four days before the start of the project when I met Rose Simpson for the first time. I had interviewed her by telephone and we had arranged to meet in the local underground coffee house. Rose has just turned 20, is part Santa Clara Pueblo Indian and part Anglo, grew up on the pueblo learning to grow food, look after animals and make pots. Not easy in this dry land. She understood the importance of and respect for water. She pointed out that she was taught the traditions and the language of her ancestors and now she was living in the big city of Albuquerque and making a success as a hip-hop spoken-word artist. She was perfect for the position of assistant. We drank coffee and laughed and worked out a schedule around preparations she was making with the pueblo to dance at an upcoming feast day.

It was one of those incredibly hot, dry days when Rose and I first met the kids in Los Padillas. We spread a tarp out under a tree, gathered the kids, introduced ourselves, talked about the water cycle and started playing with plastic drainpipes, connectors, buckets and water. The kids ranged from the age of five to 12, were all from different backgrounds, Anglo, Hispanic, Mexican, Native American and Japanese. Some could not speak English. By the end of the day all were soaking wet, one had fallen headfirst into a garbage can, two had slipped and were covered in mud, but all were smiling.

Los Padillas Elementary School is set in the south valley of Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico. It is a small rural area near the Rio Grande, where farmers grow, in fertile land, chile, corn and vegetables for the family. There is old-growth Bosque (riverside vegetation), ancient cottonwood trees and tamarisk. In between the farms are tire shops, feed stores that sell pigs and peacocks, backhoe services, panaderias and an ice-cream shop selling aqua de melon. It is like little Mexico. There are still families that live up on the mesa who haul water and have no electricity. The school is small and gentle and is staffed by concerned, innovative teachers. Ten years ago a group of them set about to form a wildlife sanctuary behind the school. They built a wetlands area and redirected the grey water from the school, where it is cleaned by biological removal, then pumped using solar energy to a pond that is now filled with lotus, bulrushes, exquisite dragonflies and frogs. It was in this wildlife area that the principal and teachers decided they wanted the water-catchment project. It was problematic: no roof to catch water, difficult access, apart from narrow walkways, hot and full of mosquitoes.

Rose and I walked the sanctuary many times, found a suitable site and continued working with the kids. We had them drawing from nature, looking at the way plants and leaves catch water. The lotus leaves were perfect examples. They learnt about berms and swales, filters pumps, siphons, gravity, flow forms and the delight and magic of playing in water. We used all this information in the designs. The kids were given huge pieces of paper, oil pastels and watercolor pastels and directed to play at being inventors. The designs came intuitively. Kids connectively use their bodies and their minds. They wiggle as they draw, they poke their neighbors as they draw, they squeal and stand on their heads and roll and feel the flow of water as they draw. The designs were innovative, fresh and fun.

It was at this time that we realized that another person on the project would really help. I was to be out of town for a few days for a project in Seattle, so I talked with a friend’s son, Gabe. I had run into him at an opening and he told me that he was working at getting his permaculture certificate (permanent agriculture, to work with nature rather than against it) and was still studying in the art department in the University of New Mexico. It turned out that he knew Rose and had time to commit to the project. He immediately became part of the team.

Gabe and Rose found with some amazing white clay, and with small, clear plastic tubing and toothpicks and sticks, the drawings were turned into models. We experimented with them to see how the water would flow into the structure and where it would be stored.

Suddenly it was the end of the summer program, the kids were whisked away by happy parents and we promised that when they came back to school in September we would have a structure built to install in the sanctuary. Kids are so trusting.

Now it was time for me to really get down to work. I took all the designs and models and played with them in the studio. I used what I saw to make my own drawings, experimented and changed ideas and had ongoing discussions with Rose and Gabe. The design had to use ideas from the kids, function, visually work with the site and be within the budget, which was small.

I chose a bowl-shaped design and showed my drawings to a friend, Rico Eastman, who is a master metal worker. I prayed that he would say that it could technically be built. Unfortunately, it could not be done in the budget range. I thought that I would have to go back to the drawing board until he told me that there was a possibility we could use the ends of propane tanks for the bowl shapes. He called a friend in Phoenix and the next day we were in the truck heading south. The bowls were perfect. There was one bowl three feet in diameter, one four-foot, and one five-foot: just what we needed. The world was working for me. It took a forklift, a crane, two heavy-duty men, sweat, money, a lot of faith and a dog to fit the bowls in the back of the truck. I held my breath as the springs on the truck sank. It was a long journey home, and of course we had not thought about how to get the damn things back out of the truck.

We did, but it was a struggle, with a lot of pushing and shoving and my friend Rico’s ingenuity. We moved the heavy bowls into various positions, poured water into the structure, watched it flow and eventually came up with technical solutions. The building process took a few weeks of change and discovery until we all agreed. During this time we explored the joy of using the structure not only as a water-catchment devise but also as a musical instrument. The bowls worked like bells and, dependent on how much water was in each bowl, one could produce different sounds. The water would allow the vibrational patterns to flow through it, alchemically forming droplets that flew out of the confines of the bowl into the air. As we made many interesting discoveries I understood we had designed not only a water catchment, but also an incredible educational structure to show the magical properties of water.

As Rico was building the structure, Gabe and Rose and I designed the landscaping and started to prepare the site. As we were doing this, I realized I had not taken into account how we were going to transport the structure into the wildlife area. The only paths were narrow walkways. However, the principal assured me there was a secret way through the deep weeds. I went ahead and ordered tons of rock and stone and gravel to be delivered to the site, and thought that the gravel truck would create the path for us to go in later with the smaller pickup. Little did I know that the gravel-truck driver would arrive in a brand-new, shiny white truck and refuse to drive through the weeds in case he scratched his new paintwork? So the tons of rock and stone were dumped at the edge of the sanctuary. Luckily we had a lot of kid energy to help us move the rocks painfully one by one to the site. The wheelbarrow full of gravel was a challenge to the older boys but we could not stop them, even at lunchtime.

After the site had been leveled and prepared, Rico and I loaded cranes and hoists and winches onto the back of a trailer, hauled all down the highway to the site and prayed that we would not get all stuck in the weeds. It was a long day of blind faith — mixed with expertise, patience and trust — to move the structure. We laughed and shouted and worked hard in the hot sun. Eventually it was placed solidly in position and we stood back, knowing that we'd better like it because there was no way to move it again.

Gabe and I spent time finishing the landscaping and organizing the first group of kids to come and play. I knew we had created something special. The kids loved it, they were engaged, asked questions and began to understand what they had been experiencing all summer in our workshops.

The dedication took place a week ago. The whole school came out, all the children carrying containers full of water. Frank Leto, a steel-drum player, made a special composition to play on the structure, kids talked about their experiences working on the project and Rose performed a water poem. The kids filled the structure with water, caused beautiful chaos and many smiles. The event was attended by teachers, parents, neighbors, two television crews, a newspaper photographer, two foals, a duck, a goose and a rooster. It was a wild success.
Now I am putting a small book together with photographs, writings and poetry from the kids. We found a little extra funding for Rose and Gabe to run workshops after school to create some poetry stones that will get placed in the walk way and we are planning to slowly keep adding to the project. It could and should be one of those projects that grow organically from the seeds that we have sown, and I hope that it will.

The mysteries of water continue. It has rained here in the desert and the water catchment structure has begun its process, singing and vibrating the patterns of nature. The cycle is running. The alchemy spreads.

Respect and thank you to John McLeod, Rose Simpson, Gabe Romero, Rico Eastman, Chris Wells, Ann Nelson, Richard Jennings, Frank Leto, Andrea Barka, Sara Keeney and teachers at Los Padillas Elementary School, Linda Jackson, Irma Ruiz and staff at Rio Grande Educational Collaborative and to all the kids who reminded me of the pleasures of play.

Chrissie Orr, a native of Scotland, has created community-based projects in Australia, Iran, Turkey, Europe, Mexico and the U.S. She was co-director of Arran Community Arts Project, Isle of Arran, Scotland, and Community Artist for East Lothian. She founded the Teen Project in Santa Fe, N.M., and the Bridge Project, which addressed issues on the border between El Paso, Tex., and Juarez, Mexico. Orr is currently core faculty at the Ecoversity in Santa Fe, N.M. In 2004, she is working on a project with Samoan youth in Seattle, Wash., and is putting together a book about the Los Padillas project.

How to Execute a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

Stanley Williams was executed this early this morning, Philippine time. I dont understand what kind of law condemns terrorism yet tolerates death penalty. If they let Stanley Williams live longer, there is hope in delivering youth at risk from gang life and its consequences. More juvenile delinquents will be reformed drawing inspiration from his work and contribution to helping re-direct the fate of the youth exposed to conditions that would lead them to a life of violence and emptiness.

(and i thought Schwarzenegger was robocop :O )

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USAPRESS RELEASE
December 12, 2005

AIUSA Says Gov. Schwarzenegger Placed Faith in Broken Death Penalty System That Is Currently Under Scrutiny by Senate CommissionGov. Must Stay All Executions and Let Senate Commission Finish Its Work (Washington, D.C.)--Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director, Amnesty International USA, today released the following statement regarding California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to allow Stanley Tookie Williams to be executed early Tuesday morning:

Now that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has made the regrettable decision to deny clemency to Stanley Tookie Williams, Amnesty International implores the Governor to stay all executions in the state and to let the Senate Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice complete its work and submit its recommendations.By refusing to stay Williams' execution, Gov. Schwarzenegger has failed to demonstrate genuine leadership on this issue. In his prepared statement, he said that he was placing his trust in California's criminal justice system, which the Senate Commission is currently investigating. Last year, the legislative body recognized the pervasive flaws plaguing the system and tasked the Commission with discovering and exposing the potentially lethal errors and bias that have metastasized throughout the state's administration of the death penalty.As California's highest-ranking public official, Gov. Schwarzenegger has an obligation to guarantee that all of the state's laws are applied equally to everyone--even people on death row. But today, he abandoned that responsibility and left the more than 640 death row inmates to fend for themselves in the state's broken system. According to the Santa Clara Law Review, California's death penalty system is incapable of providing equal protection because it lacks "... the basic safeguards to avoid capricious, erroneous, and discriminatory application of the death penalty."

Who was Stanley Williams?

[I]f it is impossible to construct a system capable of accommodating all evidence relevant to a man's entitlement to be spared death -- no matter when that evidence is disclosed -- then it is the system, not the life of the man sentenced to death, that should be dispatched.
-- United States Supreme Court Justice T Marshall, 19901

[Stanley] Williams's good works and accomplishments since incarceration may make him a worthy candidate for the exercise of gubernatorial discretion.
-- Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Hug, 20042


On 13 December 2005, the State of California plans to execute Stanley Tookie Williams, who has been on San Quentin prison's death row for well over two decades. Williams founded the notorious "Crips" street gang in Los Angeles, California, in the early 1970s. He was sent to death row in 1981 for two separate robbery murders. In one robbery a convenience store clerk was killed and in the other the owners of a motel were killed (father, mother, and grown daughter). Stanley Williams has always asserted his innocence of these specific crimes. Indeed, the United States federal appeals court described his convictions as based upon "circumstantial evidence and the testimony of witnesses with less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie in order to obtain leniency from the state."3 Amnesty International is not in a position to comment on Stanley Williams' claim of innocence, but would note the ever-growing evidence of wrongful convictions in capital cases in the USA, and that lingering doubt about guilt is itself a solid ground for commutation of a death sentence.4

Whether or not Stanley Williams committed the crimes for which he is scheduled to die, by his own admission he participated in violent behaviour before he was sent to prison and during his first seven years there. Then, during six years in solitary confinement, he underwent through focused education what he describes as a "redemptive transition." Since his release from solitary confinement in 1994, he has exhibited exemplary behaviour in prison. In 1997, Williams issued the first of his "apologies", renouncing gang life:

Twenty-five years ago when I created the Crips youth gang with Raymond Lee Washington in South Central Los Angeles, I never imagined Crips membership would one day spread throughout California, would spread to much of the rest of the nation and to cities in South Africa, where Crips copycat gangs have formed. I also didn't expect the Crips to end up ruining the lives of so many young people, especially young black men who have hurt other young black men. . .

[T]oday I apologize to you all -- the children of America and South Africa -- who must cope every day with dangerous street gangs. I no longer participate in the so-called gangster lifestyle, and I deeply regret that I ever did. . . . I pray that one day my apology will be accepted. I also pray that your suffering, caused by gang violence, will soon come to an end as more gang members wake up and stop hurting themselves and others. I vow to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions.5

Stanley Williams has "worked toward solutions" through his public apologies, by writing an award-winning series of children's books that warn about the perils of the gang lifestyle, by writing another book for older children that demythologizes the prison experience (undercutting a myth that prison is some kind of rite of passage for young African-American males), by writing his own autobiography which renounces gang violence, by producing a peace protocol to help street gangs turn to peaceful behaviour, and by founding an internet-based peer mentoring and anti-gang program involving children in the United States, Switzerland, and South Africa.6 His work played a prominent role in gang truces in Los Angeles and Newark, New Jersey. In 2004, after watching a film that depicts Williams' life (Redemption, in which the actor Jamie Foxx plays Stanley Williams), over 300 members of the Crips and Bloods gangs in Newark, New Jersey, signed a peace treaty, agreeing to end gang violence.7 Inspired by Williams' work against violence, a member of the Swiss Parliament has nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. This year, President George W. Bush's Council on Service and Civic Participation bestowed upon Stanley Williams the "Presidential Call to Service Award." The letter congratulating Williams for the award praised him for having contributed to the "build[ing of] a culture of citizenship, service, and responsibility in America."8 This special award "honors those who have provided more than 4,000 hours of service over the course of their lifetime."9

Stanley Williams' long incarceration on California's death row itself raises serious legal and moral issues.28 However it unquestionably has allowed him to have a greater opportunity to realize his own potential for rehabilitation and reform than most other death row inmates receive. By all accounts, he has taken advantage of this opportunity and has made a compelling case for his own moral transformation, including absolute repudiation of his past acts. So much so that the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit noted the Nobel Peace Prize nomination "for his laudable efforts opposing gang violence from his prison cell", and found that his "good works and accomplishments may make him a worthy candidate" for an act of executive clemency.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger should recognize the extraordinary facts in Stanley Williams' case and commute his death sentence. The alternative would be to send the message to gang members around the world that "there are no second chances in the eyes of justice . . . that in some cases, killing is right."29



1Evans v. Muncy, 498 U.S. 927, 931 (1990), Marshall J., dissenting from denial of stay of execution.2Williams v. Woodford, 384 F.3d 567, 628 (9th Cir. 2004).3Williams v. Woodford, 384 F.3d 567, 624 (9th Cir. 2004).4Safeguard 4 of the UN Safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty states: "Capital punishment may be imposed only when the guilt of the person charged is based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts." Amnesty International has also noted with concern the possible impact of race in Stanley Williams' case, namely that of an African American man sentenced to death by an all-white jury. See USA: Death by discrimination -- the continuing role of race in capital cases, AI Index: AMR 51/046/2003, April 2003, page 55.5Available at www.tookie.com/apology.html.6See Venise Wagner, Practicing peace in a North Richmond enclave, trouble kids learn not to fight. San Francisco Chronicle, 11 December 2000.7Peace breaks out on the streets as gangs shun colour of blood. The Times (London), 1 June 2004.8See the clemency petition at www.cm-p.com/pdf/executiveclemency.pdf9See www.usafreedomcorps.gov/content/council/pvsa/index.asp.10U.P.I. Regional News Release, December 23, 1988.11Editorial, When Mercy Becomes Mandatory, Atlanta Constitution, 16 August 1990, at A10.12Death Sentence Commuted, Washington Post, 16 September 1997, at B03.13Amnesty International, Urgent Action, USA (Texas): Death Penalty, James Vernon Allridge, AMR 51/125/2004, 12 August 2004.14Evans v. Muncy, 498 U.S. 927, 928-29 (1990) (Marshall, J., dissenting from denial of stay).15Id. at 930.16Id. at 931.17Id.18Sister Helen Prejean, Death in Texas, New York Review of Books, Vol. 52, No. 1, 13 January 2005.19See Allridge Urgent Action, supra, AMR 51/125/2004 ("James is deserving of clemency because he is the perfect role model inmate. I think if James was put back in [general inmate] population he would continue to be a good role model prisoner.") (Texas prison guard); Amnesty International, United States of America: Too Young to Vote, Old Enough to be Executed, AMR 51/105/2001, 31 July 2001 ("The jury's finding of future dangerousness has also been called into question by the fact that Napoleon Beazley has been a model prisoner. Before death row was recently moved from Ellis Unit in Huntsville to its new location in Terrell Unit, Livingston, and all prisoners were confined to their cells for 23 hours a day, Napoleon Beazley was one of a few prisoners assigned to jobs within the prison. At the trial the state's experts had testified that Beazley would pose a threat of violence in prison. It seems they were wrong.")20Quoted in Amnesty International, When the State Kills...The death penalty v. human rights. AI Index: ACT 51/07/89 (1989), page 9.21Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty.22Didcott, J., State v. Makwanyane, 1995 (3) SALR 391 (CC).23Mahomed, J., State v. Makwanyane, 1995 (3) SALR 391 (CC).24Amnesty International, Abolitionist and Retentionist Countries, www.amnesty.org.25Id.26Shigemitsu Dando, Toward the Abolition of the Death Penalty, 72 Ind. L. J. 7, 16, 19 (1996) ("[I]f every human being is able to develop his or her personality at any stage of life, the death penalty -- which, by nature, deprives one of such chance of rehabilitation -- is deemed inconsistent with human dignity.").27Mahomed, J., State v. Makwanyane, 1995 (3) SALR 391 (CC).28See Pratt and Morgan v. Jamaica (Nos 210/1986 and 225/1987), UN Doc. A/44/40 222 (1989); Soering v. United Kingdom, 161 Euro Ct. H.R. (Ser A) para. 81 (1989) (holding that lengthy incarceration on death row is inhuman punishment).29Last Statement of Napoleon Beazley; Amnesty International, United States of America: The Human Dignity that Texas Refuses to Recognize, AMR 51/087/2002, 31 May 2002.

Donate Clothes for Mindoro Flood Victims

Rock Ed Philippines is collecting shirts/shoes for flood victims of Mindoro. A truck will be taking the releif goods to Naujan this Friday, 16 Dec. You can drop off your donations at 60 Victoria St., Magallanes Village, or meet some members at the Coffee Bean in Eastwood 7 pm., Thursday 15 Dec.

Im also gathering some donations within the area ( Ayala Foundation Staff and friends). You can drop by the Ayala Museum tomorrow, 14th Dec and look for me.

On that flood note, I wish the media would link the floodings to Climate Change. According to PAG-ASA, intense monsoons are on its way to the Philippines, I read through Inquirer. but they never mentioned WHY. You wanna know WHY?




CLIMATE CHANGE
www.greenpeace.org.ph

1928, *Historic Image* Original photograph taken in 1928 of the Upsala Glacier. Bottom image: January 2004, Composite image of Upsala Glacier, Patagonia, Argentina.

Climate change is real and happening right now. Its reality can be seen in melting ice, dying coral reefs, rising sea levels, changing ecosystems and prolonged and more severe droughts.

According to the World Health Organization, 150,000 people are already dying every year as a result of climate change. It is for this reason that the world needs to take action now before our planet becomes damaged beyond repair.


A drought that started since October 2004 -- the country's worst in 50 years -- has affected around 700,000 people especially in impoverished farming communities. Greenpeace linked rising global temperatures and climate change to the onset of one of the worst droughts to have struck the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia in recent memory.

Our world today is hotter than it has been in two thousand years. The 1990s was, globally, the warmest decade and the 1900s, the warmest century during the last 1000 years. The seven warmest years have occurred this decade, with the warmest being 1998. By the end of the century, if current trends continue, the global temperature will likely climb higher than at any time in the past two million years. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), limiting warming to under 2° Celsius (3.6°F) is vital to preventing the worst effects of climate change.IPCC further states that "there is new and stronger evidence that the observed warming over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities". For more than a century, people have relied on fossil fuels such as oil and coal for their energy needs, with coal being the dirtiest fossil fuel. Burning fossil fuels such as coal releases into the atmosphere massive amounts of the global warming gases such as carbon dioxide -the most significant greenhouse gas. The more carbon dioxide is released, the more we increase the "greenhouse effect" on our planet by trapping in heat and increasing global temperatures. This creates catastrophic impacts on the planet's ecosystems - impacts that will hit developing countries the hardest. There is strong evidence that extreme weather events – such as hurricanes, floods, droughts and heat waves – are increasing (and becoming more severe and frequent) because of climate change. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the economic costs of extreme weather events are growing rapidly. Since 1960, the number of global weather disasters has increase four-fold, real economic losses seven-fold. Real losses are estimated from US$ 3.9 billion per year in the 1950's to a staggering US$40 billion per year in the 1990s. The cumulative number of people affected by disasters rose to two billion in the 1990s, up from 740 million in the 1970s. Virtually all of these millions were concentrated in poorer countries. Rising sea levels, melting glaciers, massive flooding, decline of agricultural yields, an increase in risk of species extinction and biodiversity loss - these are the other impacts that we may face if we don't act today to stop climate change.

Big river boat trapped on a sand bank, during one of the worst droughts ever recorded in the Amazon. The drought is severely damaging the world's largest rainforest, with wildfires breaking out, fresh drinking water becoming scarce and polluted, grounding of ships and the death of millions fish as the streams dry up.

What is Climate Change?

Climate change is the warming of our planet, caused by human activity. It is the worst environmental problem we face today. Most scientists and governments around the world now agree that climate change will damage or destroy many natural ecosystems and human communities.When we speak of climate change on a global scale, we are referring to changes in the climate of the Earth as a whole. The rate and magnitude of global climate changes over the long term have enormous implications for natural ecosystems.

Severe drought in the Brazilian Amazon. A large river now meanders as a trickle through the parched landscape. The large areas of exposed mud, baking in the sun only serve to exacerbate the drought conditions.

How does Climate Change happen?

Climate change is happening due to an increased
concentration of certain gases in the atmosphere. These heat-trapping gases are becoming more concentrated in the Earth's atmosphere, trapping more heat in the process. The most prevalent of these gases is carbon dioxide, released from burning coal, oil and natural gas in power plants, cars, factories and so on as well as through large scale deforestation. What are the impacts of Climate Change?Climate change is more than a warming trend. According to the IPCC's Third Assessment Report, increasing temperatures will lead to changes in many aspects of weather, such as wind patterns, the amount and type of precipitation, and the types and frequency of severe weather events that may be expected to occur. Such climate change could have far-reaching and/or unpredictable environmental, social and economic consequences. Some of the likely impacts of climate change are:

1. Loss of fresh water: Within 50 years, the number of people facing water shortages will soar up to 5 billion out of a total of 8 billion.
2. Decline in agriculture output: It seems obvious that any significant change in climate on a global scale should impact local agriculture, and therefore affect the world's food supply.
3. Decreased soil fertility and erosion: The shift of vegetation, droughts, and change in precipitation will increase desertification. This will indirectly lead to increased use of chemical fertilizers, and industrial pollution.
4. Pests and diseases: Conditions will be more favorable for the proliferation of insect pests in warmer climates, such as mosquitoes carrying malaria.
5. Sea-level rise: As the world warms sea water itself will expand in size. This effect combined with the partial melting of land-based glaciers such as the Greenland Ice Sheet and sea-ice will result in a rise of sea level ranging from 0.1 to 0.5 meters by the middle of the next century. Such a rise will pose a threat to coastal communities, agriculture, coastal fresh water sources, as well as, threaten the existence of some Island states.
6. Increased occurrence of extreme weather events: The increased number of droughts, floods, storms, etc has a huge impact on society and economy.



Please visit www.greenpeace.org and sign up for Clean Power! Ask our government to source at least 10% of our energy from clean and renewable sources like the sun, wind, modern biomass, micro hydro and others. Learn more about the issue and please conserve energy too! thanks :)

also visit www.stopglobalwarming.org and join the virtual march against global warming

Another Battered Woman Who Might Have Died ... But Lived To Tell Her Story of Love & Folly

i have some questions about her political decisions and her decision to stay on with her asshole husband... but then again, its her life. we have no right to judge her.

First posted 10:21am (Mla time) Dec 11, 2005 By Laarni Ilagan, Inquirer


BAGUIO CITY—The doctors gave her up for dead when they saw her mangled body. She could have been just another battered woman who died at the hands of a lover.
But Fermina “Mina” Idao, 46, survived the horrible hacking by her common-law husband of eight years, Jersey Ampaguey, in their remote farm in Castañeda, Nueva Vizcaya.
“It was a miracle,” Mina says of her survival.

She recalls how, at around 8 in the morning of January 21, Jersey accused her of having an affair when she refused to have sex with him. Drugged and intoxicated, he hacked her in blind rage with a knife. It took more than five hours before she was brought to the Sacred Heart Hospital in San Jose, Nueva Ecija.
Recounts Mina: “Our adopted son ran to our nearest neighbor 30 minutes away for help, but Jersey had followed, with his clothes drenched in my blood. He told them, ‘We were fighting. She is dead, and she is my life. I really love her.’” He also told the police that Mina was dead. “He really believed that he had killed me, so the police did not rush over to save me,” Mina adds. By the time the police came, it was 1 o’clock, and they were shocked to find her alive.
“I remember walking to seek help. But I felt woozy, went back and then blacked out,” she recalls. Police saw the trail of blood leading away from the house. “I later learned that I poured Betadine on my wounds and tried to cut pillowcases with scissors for a tourniquet,” says Mina.

Shattered bones

The blade pierced halfway through her neck, broke a rib, and shattered the bones of the arm she used to try and shield herself from his madness. Her fingers hung by the skin because she had tried to stop the blows to her head and face with her hands. She also suffered deep head wounds.
But Mina’s ordeal in the hands of her partner was just the latest in a series of misfortunes that she had suffered since she was 16, when a family friend in his late thirties raped her. The sex was so violent she had to be stitched up in a hospital. The rape also forced her into marriage at the insistence of her relatives. They got married under Tingguian rites in Malibcong, Abra, their native home.

Four years and two children later, he left for the Middle East as a contract worker. She later learned that he had a mistress who bore him a child. Mina turned to alcohol and drugs to escape her pain. She drifted into love affairs with other men in a skewed attempt to get even with her husband. She was in her early twenties, a single mother raising two very young children, living recklessly and splurging the allowance her husband continued to send for a while.
“He raped me, and when finally I learned to love him, he betrayed me,” she says.

Mina’s story mirrors similar tales about abused women that prompted the United Nations to draft an international Bill of Rights for women known as CEDAW, or the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women. The Philippines signed and ratified CEDAW 25 years ago in 1981. Today, women’s groups are looking to CEDAW to address discriminatory practices and customs that put women like Mina at a disadvantage.
Back then, however, Mina had very little faith in the law. But her downward spiral caught the attention of her first cousin, the late rebel priest and New People’s Army (NPA) leader, Conrado Balweg (aka Ka Ambo), who invited her to join his camp in Kalinga. She gave up drinking and drugs and became part of the Leftist underground movement. Pursued by the military, she had to leave her children behind.

Once, during hot pursuit, a well-known plastic surgeon who was hiding her and her comrades in his posh residence in Manila offered to alter her face to hide her identity. But Mina refused, preferring to live dangerously. She recruited idealists in schools, acted in revolutionary skits and organized symposiums. She was also trained for dangerous missions. “When a woman in the camp had to give birth, I had to bring her to a hospital. I covered for people in Manila who had a high profile in the movement, until we moved to Baguio in 1981,” Mina recalls.
Cruel ordeal

In 1983, Mina and Balweg’s wife, Corazon (Azon), were captured in Mina’s apartment in Baguio “We were under surveillance for three months by the National Intelligence Security Agency. Azon was supposed to be captured in the company of an aunt, alias Ka Girlie, but the masked and heavily-armed men who barged in mistook me for Azon and Azon for Ka Girlie,” she said. The error set Mina up for a cruel ordeal.
Blindfolded and tied to a chair with a gun pressed against her temple, Mina had to fight off a rape attempt in the darkness, and loosened the bonds that tied her hands in the process. She used this to advantage, raising her blindfold secretly whenever a person was brought in. She recognized a cousin and called out to him for help. “He vouched that I was not Balweg’s wife, and so they released me,” Mina narrates—but only after she was subjected to severe torture.

“’They beat me up till I was black and blue. They electrocuted my hands. I was screaming in pain. But I was determined not to squeal on Balweg’s whereabouts,’” Mina recounts. The soldiers kicked her with their combat shoes and slapped her face every time they did not like her answer. She is now deaf in one ear from the slapping.
The trauma for her children still haunts her. It was 8 in the evening when the soldiers came and dragged them away. Her young daughter ran after them, biting the soldier and crying, “Where are you taking my mama? When I grow up, I will take revenge on you for mama.” Mina returned at dawn, bruised and bleeding, and found her children alone and locked up in the room, her jewelry, clothes, and money looted. The frightened house help had deserted them. The two scared children sat there all night. “When I arrived, my daughter could only say, ’Mama, Mama,’ in despair and relief.”
But the hunt for her on charges of subversion commenced right after her release. Lawyers from the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) and Baguio journalists, including the late Peppot Ilagan, took turns hiding her. It was painful to leave her small children, one of them ailing, with her sister and a nanny. In time, her lawyers decided it might be safer for her to surrender because her children might be worse off with her in hiding.
Mina was detained for six months at Camp Dangwa in La Trinidad, Benguet. Six months felt like forever because of the mental torture, she says. Her lawyers, who knew that there was a plan to kill her if Balweg did not surface, befriended her guards.

Love as folly

Fortunately, martial law came to an abrupt end when Marcos was ousted and Corazon Aquino became Philippine president. Balweg forged the now historic Mt. Data Peace Pact with the Aquino administration, which formed the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army, to lure leftist guerillas back into the fold of the law.
It was time for Mina to make life secure for her children. She worked in Hong Kong for a German and Chinese couple and saved up. Today, she finds much solace in her children. Lynlyn, a consistent honor student from primary school to college, graduated summa cum laude from the St. Louis University, then again cum laude in Nursing at the Pines City Educational College last March. Her son Jay, a computer engineering graduate, is already in the United States, working out her papers for her to join him there.

But for all her fortitude, love proved to be her folly. When she returned from Hong Kong, Mina met and secretly carried on a relationship with Jersey, a drug addict and an alcoholic. Once, out of drunkenness, he hit his mother, who thereafter banished him to a farm in Nueva Vizcaya. Mina followed Jersey, which chilled her relationship with her daughter. “He was always jealous. When he was drunk, he hallucinated that I had lovers, like that day he almost killed me,” she says of him.

She has realized her folly as well. “I may have had many shortcomings, but I raised my children well. Now it’s time for me to think of my life,” muses Mina. Her biggest prayer is for healing between her and her estranged daughter. Now working as a nanny, she expresses contentment at her present station: “It is a dignified job that earns me my own money,” she says. Women’s Feature Service

The Pablo Picasso Alzheimer's Therapy

lolalallaaaaaa

this article reminds me of my lola since she has symptoms of the early stages of alzheimer's. this article gives me hope :) because i dont want her to forget me. i find it disturbing though, that since i work in a museum.... my memory will still be fit by the time my hair turns to snow. this is scary : O but then again, i forgot to take my money from the atm last week so i guess this study could be fake. hehe . bleh.


The Pablo Picasso Alzheimer's Therapy

By Randy Kennedy, New York Times

Sitting the other day in front of Picasso's rapturous "Girl Before a Mirror" at the Museum of Modern Art, Rueben Rosen wore the dyspeptic look of a man with little love for modern art. But the reason he gave for disliking the painting was not one you might expect to hear from an 88-year-old former real estate broker."It's like he's trying to tell a story using words that don't exist," Mr. Rosen said finally of Picasso, fixing the painter's work with a critic's stare. "He knows what he means, but we don't."This chasm of understanding is one that Mr. Rosen himself stares into every day. He has midstage Alzheimer's disease, as did the rest of the men and women who were sitting alongside him in a small semicircle at the museum, all of them staring up at the Picasso.It was a Tuesday, and the museum was closed, but if it had been open other visitors could have easily mistaken the group for any guided tour. Mr. Rosen and his friends did not wear the anxious, confused looks they had worn when they first arrived at the museum. They did not quarrel in the way that those suffering from Alzheimer's sometimes do. And when they talked about the paintings, they did not repeat themselves or lose the thread of the discussion, as they often do at the long-term care home where most of them live in Palisades, N.Y.At one point, a member of the tour, Sheila Barnes, 82, a quick-witted former newspaper editor who suffers from acute short-term memory loss, was even uncharacteristically aware of the limitations of her memory. "If I've told this story before, then somebody just say, 'Cool it, Sheila,' " she announced, laughing.She was a test subject, in a sense, in a growing effort to use art as a therapeutic tool for those in the grip of Alzheimer's. Art therapy, both appreciating art and making it, has been used for decades as a non-medical way to help a wide variety of people - abused children, prisoners and cancer and Alzheimer's patients. But much of this work has taken place in nursing homes and hospitals. Now museums like the Modern and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, are trying to bring it into their galleries, using their collections as powerful ways to engage minds damaged by dementia.It seems to be working, though no one knows exactly how. While extensive research has been conducted on the effects of music and performing arts on brain function - the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function in the Bronx has been studying the phenomenon for a decade now - there has been comparatively little work done in the visual arts.What exists mostly is a stockpile of anecdotal evidence, encouraging but murky. Why did Willem de Kooning become more productive, almost maniacally so, as he descended into Alzheimer's? Why does frontotemporal dementia, a relatively rare form of non-Alzheimer's brain disease, cause some people who had no previous interest or aptitude for art to develop remarkable artistic talent and drive?"Certainly it's not just a visual experience - it's an emotional one," said Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and writer. "In an informal way I have often seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive to words and disoriented and out of it. I think that recognition of visual art can be very deep."The Museum of Modern Art began to experiment with short, focused tours a year ago, working with an Alzheimer's care company called Hearthstone, based in Lexington, Mass. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, began to reach out to Alzheimer's patients more than five years ago, offering tours alongside those for other disabled groups. And the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science in Greenwich, Conn., also offers tours, in addition to conducting a program in which it sends educators to Alzheimer's care facilities to help with art therapy.At the Modern, which plans to expand the Alzheimer's program next year to families and other care providers, the effects of the tours are often striking and seem to speak - in a world of reproduction - to the power of the original. (For now, the tours focus on representational art, on the theory that it's an easier touchstone for narratives and memories. There are no Pollocks, for example.) Besides improving patients' moods for hours and even days, the tours seem to demonstrate that the disease, while diminishing sufferers' abilities in so many ways, can also sometimes spark interpretive and expressive powers that had previously lay hidden. Mr. Rosen, for instance, who had little interest in art when he was younger, talked with ease and inventiveness about the composition of Rousseau's "Sleeping Gypsy." "If you met these people back where they lived on an ordinary day, you simply would not see them being this articulate and this assured," said John Zeisel, the president of Hearthstone, who conceived the program with Francesca Rosenberg, the Modern's director of community and access programs.On that Tuesday, as the group of two men and three women and a volunteer museum educator wound their way slowly through the empty galleries, Kerry Mills, who runs the residence in Palisades, pointed out one elderly man in particular, Frank Ertola, a former New York City police detective who was making his third visit to the museum. Mr. Ertola, 86, burly with a thick sweep of white hair, had been living in the residence for almost three years and had recently begun to struggle with his emotions. "The smallest things in the world irritate him, and it's become very hard to get him engaged," Ms. Mills said.But as he sat on a folding stool in front of Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World," he smiled, listened and at one point - after abandoning a wheelchair he had requested when he arrived - stood and speculated on why there was an ellipse of mown grass surrounding the haunting farmhouse in the painting's upper right corner."It's to let you know that someone lives there," he said. Later, in front of Matisse's "Dance," he was asked to provide a title for the painting, and on a notecard wrote "Dance of the Beauties." He smiled rakishly when asked to explain. "I see a naked woman?" he said, shrugging. "I think it's beautiful."Ms. Mills was surprised to see him so talkative. "He was like he was last year," she said later. "He's such a fun person and such a gentleman, and all those things come out when he's at the museum."More than four million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease, and the number is expected to rise as the nation's overall population ages. With no cure on the horizon, caregivers are increasingly exploring art as a way to help manage the disease, and they take encouragement from the results with music. Dr. Sacks noted that exposure to music can even result in lowered dosages for patients being medicated for cognitive and emotional disorders.One avenue of thinking about both music and art, he said, is that it engages parts of the brain that remain intact long after the onset of dementia and that have to do with procedural memory - the kind that governs routine activities like walking, eating, shaving. One musician whom Dr. Sacks has observed has almost entirely lost his memory, but his musical memory is intact. "Nietzsche used to say that we listened to music with our muscles," he said. The question is whether a similar mechanism is at work in making and looking at art. The National Institute on Aging held a conference in Alexandria, Va., last year to allow researchers to compare notes on Alzheimer's and artistic activity. One speaker, Bruce L. Miller, clinical director of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, said he believed that even sitting and looking at art is much more active than most people assume, and such activity could have positive effects on damaged brains."There's a lot of general excitement in this area, but not much known about it," he said later in an interview. "I think there is, tucked in there, a research question that really hasn't been answered yet, which is: by looking at or making art, is there a way to improve the brains of those with Alzheimer's?"Museum and Alzheimer's care officials say that at the very least, they see temporary but palpable, and moving, improvement in the small group of people who have participated in the tours. Hannah Goodwin, the manager of accessibility at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, recounted watching an elderly man react to a Stuart Davis painting. "Very spontaneously, he just starting talking about the painting and about the time period in New York," she said. "He was talking about jazz and improvisation and everything. It was very beautiful and unexpected. There was this absolute clarity and connection that I think was really sparked by the painting."Irene Copeland Brenton, 73, one of the visitors to the Modern on that Tuesday, suffers from a kind of Alzheimer's that has made it very difficult for her to read and to find the right words to say. But in front of the Wyeth and later the Rousseau, she was almost loquacious. Her husband, Myron, said that while specific memories of the museum might evaporate, she seemed to retain a kind of emotional memory long after the visit ended.When he reminded her that she had visited the museum and that Ms. Mills had written an account of it, he said, "her face lit up.""She really wanted to hear about the whole thing," he said. "It seemed the experience relived itself when I prompted her."That day at the museum, looking longingly at the figure lying in a field at the bottom of the Wyeth painting, she seemed to identify deeply with the thin young woman in the dress, her left hand reaching out toward the farmhouse."You can't see her face," Ms. Brenton said, "but looking at her you get the feeling she's happy."She was asked why."Because you know she's going to get to the house," she said, adding: "I'd like to go into that house, too."

Kyoto protocol stronger after Montreal meeting

Global warming: greather threat than terrorism
www.greenpeace.org/international

International — "How often does one walk into one of these things and come out at the end of it at 6 in the morning with just about everything you asked for coming in? Not very often." That was Greenpeace climate campaigner Steve Sawyer's reaction at the end of the Climate summit in Montreal.
“The Kyoto Protocol is stronger today than it was two weeks ago. This historic first Meeting of the Parties has acknowledged the urgency of the threat that climate change poses to the world’s poorest people, and eventually, to all of us. The decisions made here have cleared the way for long term action,” said Bill Hare, Greenpeace International Climate Policy Advisor in Montreal.The meeting agreed the following:

--To start urgent negotiations on a new round of emission reduction targets for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2013-2017). A special group has been established to ensure that these negotiations are concluded “as soon as possible”. This is necessary to ensure the continuity of carbon markets, and to allow governments to put policies and measures in place to ensure that the new, deeper emission reduction targets are met

--To start now to review and improve the Kyoto Protocol. Mandated under the existing treaty, this review will formally begin at next year’s meeting.

--A Five Year Plan of Action on Adaptation, to assist least developed countries to cope with the impacts of climate change. This programme will begin to address the fact that climate change already impacts the world’s poorest, and that it will get much worse in the coming decades. It is the ethical, political, and legal responsibility of the industrialised countries to provide for this.

As expected, the Bush administration attempted to derail the process, at one point even walking out of the negotiations, but the rest of the world showed a resolve to move ahead regardless. For once, the Bush administration was forced back to the table and into agreement with the international community. No doubt the overwhelming presence of U.S. civil society at these talks has had a positive effect.The US has continued to attempt to lure countries away from the UN multilateral climate regime with its international emission trading to an ineffective approach based on voluntary actions and ‘partnerships’. Today, however, governments have agreed to hold substantive talks beginning in May 2006 on the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period, sending an unmistakable signal that we are on the road to new and more ambitious targets.According to Sawyer, "What will be remembered is that this was the moment when the future of the Kyoto Protocol and legally binding emissions reductions and the cap and trade system was secured...Australia and the US are isolated as never before, and the overwhelming presence of US state governments, cities, trade unions, businesses, churches, youth and many other parts of civil society gave the rest of the world confidence that Americans do care about climate change, and that the Bush administration's intransigence will sooner rather than later be remembered as an unfortunate historical footnote."

To Filipinos, please sign up for clean energy! ask our government to aim for at least 10% of our energy to be sourced from clean energy ( wind, modern biomass, microhydroelectric, and the sun), by 2010. Sign the petition on www.greenpeace.org.ph

You can also join the virtual march against global warming on www.stopglobalwarming.org.

Thanks :)