Do you have a penchant for the pen? Ever wanted to share your talent with the world?

Ever dreamed of being published?

Published, not just in some obscure academic softbound journal, not that that's not
noteworthy, but in a real, hardbound, available in bookstores kind of published? Then
you've come to the right place...

We're currently accepting poems, short stories for the annual UCD MA in Creative
Writing Anthology Contest. One submission will be chosen in each category. Each
winning entry, along with the entrant's bio, will be published alongside the Class of
2011 in the anthology.   

The contest is open to anyone, domestic and international, including all poets, writers
and artists regardless of experience from now until September 14, 2011 at 11:59PM.

For more information please see our

 

 

 

 

Submission Guidelines or Contest Fees.

Meet the Judge,

Kevin Power.

Ready to submit? Right this way...

SUBMIT.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The yearly anthology produced by the UCD Creative Writing Masters is one of the 
highlights of the English department, showcasing the talent that UCD produces. As part 
of our fundraising efforts for this year’s anthology, the Creative Writing Masters group is 
running a short story competition open to all comers, from inside and outside the 
university.

One winner will be selected from the short story, another winner from the poetry 
submissions and their work, along with a quick bio will be included in the anthology.

This is the first time such an opportunity has been made available, and is a fantastic 
opportunity for anyone interested in a career in fiction.

The contest is open to anyone, domestic and international, including all poets and writers 
regardless of experience from now until September 14, 2011 at 11:59PM.

Rules

• All entries must be original works.
  

• All work submitted must be previously unpublished and ideally should not be under 
  consideration elsewhere.
  

• Multiple entries are accepted, though we ask that all poem submissions be sent in 
  one email, all artwork in another email, and so on.
  

• There are no limits to your entries, but both payment and entry must be sent 
  electronically.
  

• All submissions must be submitted via email as an attachment. Each submission 
  must also include the name, phone number, and email address in the body of the 
  email. Repeat method for multiple submissions.
  

• The competition opens now and ends on the 14th of September, 2011 at 11.59PM.
  

• There is an entry fee of €10, and all proceeds go towards the anthology.
  

• The winner will be announced on the 21st of September and all participants will be 
  notified by email of the result.
  

• A short biography of 200 words or less should be included with contact information.
  If this is not included, the story will not be considered.
  

Fees:
The entry fee is €10.00 (Euros) up to 3 poems, no longer than 40 lines in length.
The entry fee is €10.00 (Euros) per short story between 2000 to 3000 words.

Short Story:

• Stories should be between 2000 and 3000 words in length. There is some leeway, 
  but in general entries outside this length will not be considered.
  
• Submission attachments must be in .doc, .docx, .rtf or .pdf format.
  

Poetry:

• All poems must be 40 lines or fewer, single or double line spacing. There is some 
  leeway, but in general entries outside this length will not be considered.
  
• We limit the number of poetry submissions per entry fee to no more than 3 pieces.
  
• Submission attachments must be in .doc, .docx, .rtf or .pdf format.
  

These fees may be paid by PayPal (online payment service). Each genre entry must be 
paid individually when using the PayPal payment option. PayPal payment must be made 
before submitting the entry and any submission that comes without an entry fee will be 
disqualified.

Other legal jargon…

Decisions: The Judge is Kevin Power. All poems are judged on the basis of originality, 
creativity, characterization, and artistic quality. All short stories are judged on the basis 
on originality, creative imagination, character introduction and development and plot 
development. All decisions of the judge is final.

Privacy Policy: UCDAnthology.com does not release or sell contest entrant information 
to third parties or mailing lists, nor will you receive telephone solicitations, whatsoever.

Rights: All poems and stories remain the property of the artist who wrote or created them.

Notification: All winners will be notified by email or by telephone. The top winning entry 
of each genre will have their work, name and brief biographical information published in 
the UCD Class of 2011 Writing Anthology.

For further information or questions, email us at: contest@ucdanthology.com

2011 Competition

Preparations for the 2011 competition are now complete and we are very pleased to say that Peter Wyton (poetry) and Maria McCann (short stories) have accepted our invitation to act as judges. 

How to enter.  Leaflets are available through local libraries and a national writing magazine, and you can print an entry off this website.  Postal entry is available as usual, and you can now enter on line.  

Please note new format for announcing winners.  All entrants to the competitions are invited to attend on Sunday 16 October - Open Sunday.  There will be opportunities for you to read your own poem to an audience, to buy a booklet of the short-listed poems, and to vote for the one you like best.  Only at the end of the day will the judges announce the results - including the Festival's Favourite Poem - and award the prizes.

Please keep an eye on the website for developments and updates.

Prizes will be as last year.

• 1st Prize, £500
• 2nd Prize, £200
• 3rd Prize, £100
• Wyvern Prize, £100.  (Reserved for entrants who live within the postal codes beginning BA, BS, and TA.)

• Fee per entry (i.e. single poem or short story) will be £5.  So if you submit, say, 3 short stories or poems, the total fee will be £15.
• Closing date for receipt of entries will be Sunday 31 July 2011.

San Jose Public Library's Graphic Novel Contest, top prize: $100

Deadline: 30 July 2011

If you have a talent for creating illustrated short stories, you are invited to enter San José Public Library’s Graphic Novel Contest for all ages as part of our Summer Reading Celebration, 2011. This contest is sponsored by San José Public Library and TRY Japan Culture Group.

Here’s how to enter …

* Create your own graphic novel with a maximum length of 8 pages of text and black-and-white drawings using letter-size paper, including the cover page.
* Each submission must be the creative and original work of a single individual—the author/illustrator.
* Be sure to include your NAME, AGE and CONTACT INFORMATION on the back of your entry.
* Submit a photocopy that is an accurate reflection of the original (please do not submit original work as submissions are non-returnable).
* Entries can be submitted to any San José Public Library location no later than 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 30, 2011. There is a limit of one entry per contestant.

Entries will be judged on content and illustrations by a panel of library staff and comic industry professionals. All winners will get a gift card.

* Children: first prize $50; second prize $25; third prize $20
* Teens: first prize $100; second prize $75; third prize $50
* Adults: first prize $100; second prize $75; third prize $50

Winners will be announced and prizes awarded at a reception to be held at the Evergreen Branch Library on August 27th at 3:00p.m.in the Community Room.

San José Public Library reserves the right to refuse submissions that are not appropriate for a general audience.

Contact Information:

For inquiries: click here

For submissions: entries can be submitted to any San José Public Library location

Website: http://www.sjpl.org/

 

Toure

Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? - Passage 1

Photography by Jacob Holdt

Location: Lagos, Nigeria

Top: Untitled

Middle Left:Mohammed, Garba, Baba & Bintu

Middle Right: Hopper

Bottom: Merkabah

(via fashionistazapatista)

• 21 July 2011

The Granta blog • By Rachael Allen

Poetry and the Arab Spring

11 February 2011, Tahrir Square courtesy of Jonathan Rashad

Over the last few weeks, the vast center of London City Hall has housed events organised by Poet in the City, focusing on the presence of poetry during the Arab Spring as part of the Shubbak festival. The Daily Beast, NPR, the New York Times and Al-Jazeera all reported on the presence of poetry in the Egyptian revolution; how lines from an early 20th century Tunisian poem by Abul-Qasim al Shabi were chanted, how recitals broke out nightly and how poetry was a catalyst for staying power. One of Al-Jazeera’s correspondents told how protestors chanted through the evening, ‘There’ve been poetry readings. It seems as if they’re saying “it’s early in the morning but we’re here to stay. We’re not going anywhere”.’

It is hard to hear the words ‘protest poetry’ without drawing up stereotypes – the fruitier speeches from Speakers Corner; bland, half-hearted spoken word; dusty, html-challenged, politically motivated poetry forums from 2004, all empty lyrics provoking none of the change attempted. Yet from the outside – from the Poet in the City events and the optimistic reporting – it seemed as though poetry was doing something to abate a combined restlessness; poetry was finally reflecting a universal consciousness. poetry was finally reflecting a universal consciousness. However, this idea is not agreed upon by all. Nasser Farghaly, a filmmaker, poet and writer who read for an event on poetry’s presence during the revolution in Tahrir Square, spoke of a broad dialectic of the use of poems as a tool for political movement in modern Arabic poetry. He told me about the poets who refused to engage with poetry as a platform for political change, seeing it as either propaganda, moral dogmatism or just plain useless.

‘The dialectic that has characterised the Arabic contemporary poetry scene for the last fifty years was very evident in the revolution; this is the dialectic of revolution in poetry, or revolution by poetry. Should a poet employ poetry to serve a political purpose? Or should the poet revolutionise his own poem, regardless of the subject that it deals with?’

Nasser outlined a spectrum for me: at one end are colloquial lyrics that are made for protest, and on the other, a more academic, often classical-Arabic poetry that aims to create a revolution within the borders of the poem. The latter believe that their authority extends to the outer reaches of the poem only, thus this is the only thing they can attempt to revolutionise.

‘Some people think this is the way to do it, they say this is revolution in poetry, this is the extent of the poet’s authority over things.’ Nasser explains. ‘He has authority over his own poem, so his own poem should be a resemblance of the new concept, in poetic terms. ‘He has authority over his own poem, so his own poem should be a resemblance of the new concept, in poetic terms.’ The modern and post-modern poets, writing and trying to be analytical, criticising the direct use of poetry in the revolution; they don’t want to employ their poems to serve any purpose other than the poetic values itself.’

Without aligning himself to either camp, Nasser tells me that he is for the ‘existence of different ideologies, different trends of thought. My point of view is that all forms should exist and every form of them has its own aesthetic values to give to people. We can still enjoy all forms of Arabic poetry.’

And for the majority of citizens on Tahrir Square, Nasser explains, it wasn't neccessarily the creation of protest poetry that was most prominent. It was from chanting the unifying lyricism of poets like Mahmoud Darwish and Amal Donkol – embedded in politics and dedicated to reflecting a social situation and freedom of speech– from which the protestors took strength.

Ahmad Yamani, an Egyptian poet who joined Farghaly in reading poems on the evening, saw what happened on Tahrir Square as an aligning of the different types of poetry highlighted by Nasser. Speaking particularly of Abul-Qasim al Shabi, the poet whose famous lines had been chanted during the protest, he saw a shrinking of this dialectic and a use for poetry as a tool for movement.

‘The main role of poetry was played by poems already written from pre-revolution years, not especially written for this particular uprising. The slogan which all the Arab uprisings that we are witnessing now used – all of them – is derived from a poem by a late Tunisian poet. Arabic people are shouting everywhere, “the people want the collapse of the regime,” and al Shabi wrote, “If people want life, destiny will have to obey.” In Arabic, the wording of both is very similar. Even the main slogan of the revolution is linked to early 20th century poetry.’‘Even the main slogan of the revolution is linked to early 20th century poetry.’

The readings presented a healthy breadth of poets working in Arabic today, writing at different points of the poetic spectrum outlined by Nasser, or completely ignoring it. Yet the resounding message surely came from the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish, who gave an introduction to his reading, reminding us of those who wait for revolution, and the solace they take – or perhaps loathe – in the use, or uselessness, of poetry. Following a translation of his poem read in English, Najwan banished any sense of poetic infighting with the clear message that, for some, there was still a way to go before revolution. ‘I dedicate my reading to Sheikh Raed Salah who is an important person to me, and who was arrested close to the opening of Shabbak festival. And by the way, the poem she was reading was about a Palestinian colonial British prison built in the 60s. It seems that history has endless prisons.’

__________________________

A Humanitarian Disaster

in the Making

Along the Chad-Cameroon

Oil Pipeline -- Who's Watching?

The discovery of oil in Chad was supposed to allieviate poverty and human suffering, but it's only enriched Western Oil companies and the local dictators.

December 2, 2009  

In 2000 Big Oil, the World Bank, and two corrupt dictators teamed up to launch the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline Project. Years on, the media attention is subsiding while the negative impacts of the pipeline worsen daily. Brendan Schwartz and Valery Nodem reporting from Chad and Cameroon.

Know Chad?

If you’ve heard of Chad -- no, not the Bengals’ Ochocinco -- you probably haven’t heard anything good about it. Almost continuous war since independence and its involvement the Darfur conflict have gotten Chad nothing but bad press. One author called it “a neglected tragedy of a nation.” Chad is in fact a strikingly beautiful country and its people are as vibrant and diverse as any. But without a doubt, there is great human suffering. And as many people have noted, the discovery of black gold isn’t helping.

The Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline Project, although relatively little-known to the general public, was for a time the source of fierce debate and high rhetoric in international development circles. The World Bank-financed project in the heart of war-torn Central Africa pumps 170,000 barrels/day of crude from Chad’s Doba basin to Cameroon’s Atlantic port city of Kribi, 1,080 kilometers away. Led by such corporations as Exxon and Chevron, the pipeline received plaudits from the World Bank as “an unprecedented framework to transform oil wealth into direct benefits for the poor, the vulnerable and the environment.” Nine years after the World Bank agreed to finance the pipeline, six years after oil went online, and just one year after the World Bank quit the project, Chad-Cameroon is slowly fading from the development spotlight. The World Bank quietly released their own evaluationof the project last week admitting that the project failed to achieve its two main goals of reducing poverty and improving governance. One hopes this is not the World Bank’s final evaluation of the project since oil is scheduled to flow for another twenty years and the worst of the project’s impacts are just beginning to be felt. This is an update from the field.

National Mourning and Broken Promises

For Chadian President Idriss Deby, oil revenues are a means to prolong abusive and undemocratic rule. He changed the constitution to become president for life, used over 30% of Chad’s oil revenues on war, and used money destined for development in “priority sectors” to grant opaque, no-bid public contracts to god knows whom -- all things he promised not to do. It is little wonder that Chadian civil society declared the pipeline’s inauguration a day of national mourning. The World Bank’s public sector lending arms (the IDA and IBRD) announced their withdrawal from the project in 2008 stating “Chad failed to comply with key requirements” of their participation, though the World Bank’s private sector lending arm (the IFC) had no problem staying on board to reap the benefits of its $200 million commercial loan. Many promises were also made to people living in the oil-producing zone in the southwest of Chad. Villagers were promised fair compensation for the loss of land expropriated by Exxon, employment with the oil companies for the life of the project, and 5% of oil revenues to be invested in their villages. According to local residents, these promises were empty.

The Displaced

A woman in the Bero village of the oil producing zone explained that Exxon had displaced her whole family and promised to build them new houses equipped with furniture and find them new land. Although new houses were built, the construction was so shoddy that Exxon was forced to return just two years later and rebuild them to avoid a major PR embarrassment. There is no furniture to be found. In theory, everyone displaced by the project received some form of compensation, but rarely has it been sufficient to restore their standard of living. This is because Chad’s oil happens to be located a few meters below Chad’s most fertile agricultural land. The farming problem is especially serious since the zone is Chad’s only breadbasket and feeds most of the country. Exxon and the project planners claimed that compensations would be paid to displaced people, but that “self resettlement” would take place naturally whereby villagers would find/purchase new land for farming from a “village land pool.” A recent Chadian report notes that this has not happened; many farmers have not found land or enough land. Agricultural production is continually declining and will ultimately penalize the entire country.

The Local Government of Exxon

Hoping to avoid paying too much compensation, Exxon has allowed many villagers to stay in the oil producing zone. Villagers often live precariously close to oil wells which turn round the clock. Increased banditry in the zone led the former governor of the Logone Oriental Province to instruct local police to “arrest or shoot on sight” anyone circulating through the zone after 6 pm. Now people living in the zone are literally surrounded by oil infrastructure and prisoners in their own homes. Almost every facet of their lives is governed by Exxon, the de facto local government.

Take the case of Namarde Keiro. His family lives within 500 meters of Exxon’s Operations Center and within twenty meters of an active oil well. As high voltage power lines tower over his home, Keiro’s family lives in what the World Bank calls “extreme poverty” with no access to clean water or electricity. On October 11 of this year, Keiro discovered an oil spill while returning home from his farm. He alerted Exxon employees who immediately cordoned off the area and “cleaned” it up before any outside observers could see the damage. The oil spill ruined Keiro’s fallow land, and so they decided to compensate him with a special gift: an empty Esso (Exxon’s operator) backpack.

(Pictured above: Esso backpack and remnants of the oil spill)

This was allegedly the fifth oil spill related to the project, yet was not reported by a single media outlet in or outside of Chad. If a journalist from the Associated Press made just one phone call to Exxon in Houston, Keiro likely would receive thousands of dollars of compensation within a week. 

Employees of the oil consortium returned to Keiro’s home on November 6^th with surveying equipment. Apparently they want to build a road which will pass two meters from the family’s mud hut. According to local NGOs, Exxon’s strategy is to make life so unbearable for local residents that they leave on their own accord with no compensation. It’s working.

Invisible 5%

As for the 5% of oil revenues promised to residents of the oil-producing zone -- it’s all being spent on so-called “Presidential Projects.” These are high-profile large infrastructure projects that Deby has gifted to the regional capital of Doba, more than a thirty-minute drive from the villages hit hardest by oil production. These projects, which include an already crumbling football stadium, are intended to win support for Deby’s party in the 2010 local elections and 2011 presidential election. When asked if any of the 5% funds had been spent in his village, the Chief of Meikiri choked up with laughter before finally catching his breath to say “no.” That was Sunday. On Monday, Exxon began drilling an oil well just feet from the soccer field of his village’s elementary school. $74 million dollars have been spent in the oil producing zone on development projects according to the Vice-President of the committee managing the “5% fund.” Yet nothing is visible in the villages playing host to the project.

Weapons, Weapons, Weapons

The greatest impact of oil in Chad has been felt not by the caged-in villages of the Doba Basin, but rather in the North and East of country where hundreds of millions of dollars of oil money has been used to purchase weapons for a war that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands. In 2007, Chad spent 4.5 times more money on the military than it did on health, education, and other social spending combined. Despite the World Bank’s guarantee of a model framework for oil-led development, oil has continued to fuel war where civilians are the primary victims. Chad even used oil money to purchase weapons which were later confiscated from JEM, the Darfurian rebel group Deby hired to protect his capitol from Chad’s own rebels. The oil for war and war for oil reality is deeply ingrained in Chad’s popular political consciousness. Nadji Nelambaye, the coordinator of a Chadian NGO, snapped “are you trying to provoke me?” when asked if he thought there was a link between oil and war in the country. He then launched into a passionate hour-long speech which 99% of Chadians would agree with. According to a recent International Crisis Group report, two of Chad’s high ranking ministers -- who happen to be President Idriss Deby’s twin nephews -- defected to the armed rebellion explicitly because of perceived misuse of oil revenues.

Cameroon, the Other One

Chad has received a lot of attention and criticism related to its oil adventures. However, almost 900 kilometers of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline pass through that other country: Cameroon.

Despite receiving minimal “transit revenues” from Chad’s oil, the pipeline’s social and environmental impacts are just a harsh for Cameroonians living along the pipeline route. 248 villages are directly impacted by the pipe and dozens more by roads, operations centers, and employee living bases all built expressly for the project. Unlike in neighboring Chad, no oil revenues have been set aside for development spending in the affected villages. The Cameroonian government claims it only receives $25 million per year and some of that money returns to impacted villages via increased social spending in the national budget. But the truth is no one knows where the $25 million is spent (or if that’s the true amount) and there is no accountability for the use of the revenues. Thus the accent of the debate in Cameroon centers on the (non)payment of compensation. The Environmental Management Plan (EMP), hundreds of pages of World Bank crafted policy jargon, required the oil consortium and Cameroonian government to pay all compensation before construction of the pipeline began in 2001. Today, Cameroonian NGOs have documented hundreds of cases in which compensation was never paid, partially paid, or paid in kind with shoddy materials. Try this Pu-pu platter of compensation disasters:

The Village Grandfather 

Mongotsoe Akam is a quiet and awkward grandfather living in the small village of Ebaka in Cameroon’s East Province. He has been a farmer his whole life and seems content to continue living the traditional village life. During the pipeline’s construction, multiple subcontractors of the oil consortium were constantly buzzing around his home and farm. They were looking for laterite, a type of rock used to surface the unpaved roads the consortium built to transport materials and heavy machinery. Mr. Mongotsoe showed them the exact location of his laterite and negotiated a price for its extraction. Not only was he never paid for the use of his laterite, but he also was never compensated for the $50,000 worth of crops that were bulldozed to access the quarry. Mr. Mongotsoe politely waited until the pipeline construction was completed in 2003 to complain of his plight. When Exxon refused to pay, he asked an agricultural engineer from the Cameroonian Ministry of Agriculture to evaluate the damage to his land. Using EMP principles, the engineer’s report concluded Mongotsoe was owed a little over $50,000 and was sent to the director of Exxon’s environmental unit. Exxon later replied in a written notice that Mongotsoe’s claims documented by the Ministry of Agriculture are “not convincing” and “lack coherence.” In September, 2009 the oil consortium finally offered to settle with Mongotsoe for a mere $600. When the old man refused, an Exxon employee told two Cameroonian NGOs that Mongotsoe was trying to swindle the company since he knows they have tons of money. Can you imagine the headline in The Onion? “Cameroonian Grandfather Bankrupts Supermajor.”

Confusion in the Domps

A few hundred kilometers away in the village of Dompta, unemployed youth watch as small airplanes land and take off where they used to farm—now Exxon’s private landing strip. Their individual compensation payments were spent years ago and now they have no livelihood. The Chief of Dompta signed a contract with Exxon for the construction of a health clinic as “community compensation.” When the health clinic wasn’t built, he wrote to the oil consortium demanding they follow through on their written agreement. One of Exxon’s directors cordially replied that the health center would be built and the village could use health clinics in neighboring villages until then. Dompta’s chief died in 2007 and was replaced by his son as tradition requires. The new Dompta chief claims Exxon built a health center in Dompla (notice the difference in spelling), a village about 30 kilometers away and even proudly posted a sign that read “Dompta Health Clinic.” We will never know if this is a cruel joke or corporate idiocy because no one from the oil consortium has yet to comment on the issue. For the people of Dompta, it doesn’t really matter.

Fishing for Oil

No place in Cameroon has been overrun by the pipeline as much as the coastal city of Kribi. Traditional Kribians wake up around 5 am and ready their wooden canoes for the day’s fishing expedition. As each day passes, they paddle farther and farther to catch fewer and fewer fish. That’s because one of the principal fishing reefs was dynamited to make way for the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, which is buried under 11 kilometers of seabed. Supertankers from around to world come to dock at the Offshore Loading Facility just off Kribi’s coast, fill up on Chadian crude, and then head off to Europe and the US. The Cameroonian coast guard and Exxon private security won’t let fisherman drop their nets near the Offshore Facility and routinely harass artisanal fisherman as commercial Chinese trawlers illegally overfish the outer waters with impunity.

In January of 2007, an oil spill occurred in Kribi. As fisherman reeled in their day’s catch, they couldn’t help but notice the distinctly black color of all their fish. Exxon claims the damage was minimal. No independent analysis has been conducted to measure the impact of the spill in Kribi, which is also Cameroon’s premier tourist destination. The damage done to Kribi’s artisanal fishers is incalculable because the oil consortium’s environmental baseline studies don’t include sufficient data on fishing. Beach-front villages have been given $4,000 each in additional compensation, which Exxon calls “bon voisinage”—being good neighbors—but takes no responsibility for the collapse of Kribi’s fishing industry.

The World Bank asked the government of Cameroon and Exxon to jointly publish an official “Oil Spill Response Plan” before the project became operational in 2003. The plan was “inaugurated” at Yaounde’s ritzy Hilton Hotel on November 3^rd, 2009. A member of a prominent Cameroonian NGO which has been monitoring the project was barred from the event because “he didn’t have accreditation.”

America’s Responsibility and What You Can Do

As America’s search for oil and gas intensifies on the African continent (soon to comprise 25% of all US oil imports), Americans should be aware of the human/environmental costs of their continuing lust for black gold and the actions of their corporations. Bluntly put, oil in Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Chad, Angola, and Sudan has further impoverished people at best and caused inestimable human suffering in many cases. Ghana, Mauritania, Uganda, Sao Tome and others have nascent industries which could become strategic in the search for the world’s least renewable resource.

The ultimate goal of international campaigning is to “leave African oil in the soil” and build stronger governance beforehand since the extractive industries almost never contribute to development. However, powerful interests are making that objective difficult. Thus the fight will for now be concentrated on policy improvements. Here are a couple easy things you can do to influence policy and help prevent a repeat of the Chad-Cameroon debacle:

Contact your elected representatives to support Senator Richard Lugar's Energy Security through Transparency (ESTT) Act, S.1700. The bill would require energy and mining companies to reveal how much they pay to foreign countries and the U.S. government for oil, gas, and other minerals. The information would be included in financial statements that are already required by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This would apply to both American and international companies listed with the SEC, covering a majority of the largest oil, gas and mining companies in the world. This bill is part of a large international campaign called the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

Alert your elected representatives to the Human Rights Watch campaign to mandate that the US Export-Import Bank (ExIm) and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) require extractive industries companies who receive funding or political risk insurance from them to show that they have effective policies and procedures to address security and human rights, and give those companies the capacity to monitor compliance with those standards. Both ExIm and OPIC financed the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline.

>via: http://www.alternet.org/world/144303/a_humanitarian_disaster_in_the_making_al...

Recession worsens

racial wealth gap

By Ben Rooney @CNNMoney July 26, 2011: 5:19 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The wealth gap in the United States has grown wider in the wake of the Great Recession, with black and Hispanic American households faring much worse than white households, according to a study published Tuesday.

The study, from 2009 data compiled by the Pew Research Center, found the median wealth of white households was 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households.

Household wealth is defined as the sum of a family's assets minus the sum of its debts. The study defines assets as homes, cars, savings and financial investments, while debts include mortgages, auto loans and credit card debt, among other things.

Based on data from the Census Bureau, the study highlights how blacks and Hispanics have been disproportionately affected by the collapse of the housing market, the financial crisis and the recession that marked the period from 2005 to 2009.

It found that the wealth gap between white households and their black or Hispanic counterparts was the widest it has been since the government began publishing such data by ethnicity in 1984.

How the rich became the über rich

The wealth of white households in America has always been greater than black and Hispanic households. But the recession widened the gap significantly, with the spreads more than double what they were during the two decades leading up to the recession, the study said.

Rakesh Kochhar, one of the report's co-authors, said it's possible that the gaps may have narrowed somewhat since 2009.

Kochhar said home prices have stabilized in the last year, which should lift the net worth of black and Hispanic homeowners, since both groups draw a large share of their net worth from home equity.

At the same time, he added, the wealth of white households has probably benefited from the rise in stock prices over the last few years, since a much higher share of whites own stocks.

But a recovery would not be enough to narrow the current divide significantly.

According to the study, the inflation-adjusted median wealth among Hispanic households fell 66% from 2005 to 2009. Black households suffered a 53% drop in net worth over the same period. By contrast, whites saw a decline of 16% in household wealth.

In 2009, the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth. Hispanic families had about $6,325 in wealth. The average white household had a net worth of $113,149.

The study also showed that a third of black and Hispanic households had zero wealth, meaning that their debts were larger than the value of all their assets.

Overall, the study attributed much of the disparity to the decline in home values, which hit black and Hispanic households hardest.

In addition, the downturn in the housing market was most severe in states with large populations of Hispanics and Asians, including California, Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Michigan, according to the study. 

 

Blue Gaza

Friday Film Pick: Gaza Strip

by Ezra Winton on July 22, 2011 · Comments

James Longley is a gifted filmmaker with a steady, methodological patience for the quieter moments of life – he captures them with beautiful cinematography and puts the images together as narratives of struggle, survival and dignity. His films have won numerous awards all over the world and he is celebrated for his breathtaking, provocative feature documentary Gaza Strip (2002), this week’s Friday Film Pick. In an act of generosity and showing a sober approach to getting older films “out there” Longley has recently put the entire film up on Vimeo. You can watch the whole thing after the jump.

 

Longley, who was awarded a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant” in 2009, writes about Gaza Strip and recent changes in the Middle East on the film’s Vimeo page:

In early 2001 I spent three months in Gaza filming material for this documentary, GAZA STRIP, working with local fixer and translator, Mohammed Mohanna. The second Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation had begun in September, 2000, and there had already been large numbers of deaths in Gaza when I started this project.

Though the period this documentary covers includes the election of Ariel Sharon as Israeli Prime Minister and large incursions by the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, in retrospect the time depicted here is one of relative quiet. More recent Israeli attacks against Gaza have been far more destructive and deadly than what falls into the scope of this film.

The time since the release of this film in 2002 has seen many changes, including the evacuation of illegal Israeli settlements inside the Gaza Strip and the election of Hamas. However, the occupation and attacks against Gaza continue, and the blockade of Gaza has intensified. It is my hope that this film will provide a partial introduction to Gaza for those who have come to the subject recently, and also serve as a document of its time.

I am making this film available completely free, however those who wish to contribute to my future filmmaking efforts may do so via PayPal or mail on my website.

Thanks!

You may also rate the film or write a review on the film’s IMDb page. Enjoy!