PUB: UN/ COSTI Refugees and Human Rights Youth Poetry Contest (Canada)|Writers Afrika

UN/ COSTI Refugees and Human Rights

Youth Poetry Contest (Canada)

 

Deadline: 17 May 2011

Topic: Refugees and Human Rights

How to Submit a Poem: Download the Entry Form here PDF format

Eligibility: This contest is open to all aspiring poets who are students in Grades 4-12 and attending schools in the greater Toronto area. Poems will be written in English with a maximum of 24 lines. Awards will be given based on the following three grade categories for a total of three first prizes: Group I grades 4-5-6, Group II grades 7-8, Group III grades 9-10-11-12. Current employees or relatives of UNHCR Canada or COSTI Immigrant Services are not eligible to enter the contest.

Prizes: Three First Prizes of $200.00 each. Three Second and Third Prizes of $100.00 each.

Decisions: Judges will be members of the UNHCR Toronto Office, COSTI Immigrant Services, others to be announced. Entries will be judged on the basis of originality, creative imagination, characterization, artistic quality, adherence to the topic, and rules established for the contest. All decisions of the judges are final.

Fees: There are no entry fees, no subsidy payments, and no purchases of any kind required to enter and win the contest.

Rights: All poems remain the property of the artist. By submitting a poem for this contest, the artist grants permission to UNHCR Canada and COSTI Immigrant Services to publish the poem, profile contest participants, and use submitted materials in any manner related to refugee and human rights promotion, including for World Refugee Day. UNHCR Canada and COSTI Immigrant Services are under no obligation to publish any contest entries. The artist is under no obligation to purchase a copy of the publication in which the poem may appear.

Winners will be invited to an open ceremony for prize awards and photo/interview opportunity, children younger than 16 will need to be accompanied by a responsible adult that can authorize and sign on their behalf.

Notification: All prize winners will be notified by mail and posted at www.costi.org

For further information, contact:
Mary Pam Vincer
vincer@costi.org
416.244.8989

Q. How does the contest work, and what prizes can I win?

A. UNHCR Canada and COSTI Immigrant Services are sponsoring the second annual greater Toronto area “Refugees and Human Rights Child and Youth Amateur Poetry Contest” to bring greater attention to human rights abuses and the plight of refugees. Each poem will be evaluated by our selection committee.

There are three school grade categories awarded a First Prize of $200 each. The categories are grades 4 to 6, grades 7 to 8 and grades 9 to 12. Each category will also be awarded a Second and Third Honourable Mention in the form of a plaque.

Q. What is the topic and how do I enter the contest by mail?

A. Please enter only one original poem, 24 lines or fewer, on the subject “Refugees and Human Rights”, in any style. The subject is very broad and you can choose to express your views on any aspect of “Refugees and Human Rights”.

Please mail or email your poem to the following address:

Poetry Contest
1710 Dufferin St.
Toronto, ON
M6E 3P2
Email: admin@costi.org

Contact Information:

For inquiries: admin@costi.org

For submissions: admin@costi.org

Website: http://www.costi.org/

 

 

CULTURE: Cinema in francophone sub-Saharan Africa: from “Monstration” to contemporary storytelling > BUALA

Cinema in francophone

sub-Saharan Africa:

from “Monstration” to

contemporary storytelling

Documentary cinema in Africa more or less follows the same trajectory as African Literature. The methodologies and forms of expression are certainly different but the discourse on Africa remains the same, evolving with the continent’s history. In the 1920s, colonial reportage and ethnographic films were already a success. Africa and Africans were filmed subjects. From 1955 onwards, when these subjects became authors of their own images, filmmaking was first and foremost justified by the desire to improve the image of Africans. As with the Négritude movement in literature during the mid 20th century, the positioning of African filmmakers behind the camera essentially arose from a desire to understand their values and African identity. The Canadian filmmaker Pierre Perrault, declared in the same manner that “We started to exist from the moment we stopped looking at ourselves through the gaze of our neighbour.” “Monstration”, demonstration and contemporary storytelling or representing present conditions, giving life to African History.

 

Samba Félix NdiaySamba Félix Ndiay

Before proceeding with our argument, let us pause on the label “African cinema”. Africa is very often considered as a whole and indeed as a country. Today, we speak in the same manner and with the same ease of “African” cinema as we would of Portuguese cinema, making no distinctions between the territorial realities of each. It is true that Portugal alone produces as many films in a year as the entire continent of Africa, if not more. But to reduce the continent to the scale of a country displeases several filmmakers who agree upon representing multiple and singular “Africas”. Thus, we can distinctly speak about North Africa or the Maghreb, West Africa or even Francophone, Lusophone and Anglophone Africa.

Some definitions of African cinema:

a)    Films realised in Africa by individuals of African origin

b)    Films on the subject of Africa and Africans (regardless of the director’s origin)

c)    Films by Africans not restricted by subject matter or the place where the film is made

It is with regard to these three categories of African cinema that we will see how from its birth to today, this relatively young cinematic practice developed separately in the French speaking and Sub-Saharan region of the continent.

I)      Monstration

I define “monstration’ as intuitive presentation based on interpretation or the reading one makes of an object on display. It implies notions of discovery and novelty.

“Monstration” in African cinema was celebrated by the colonial enterprise. In the same vain as explorers such as Savorgnan De Brazza, Diego Cao, Livingstone and others who encountered the new lands of the dark continent, the world was confronted with images of men who were often solely labelled as savages, barbarians, primitives and natives.

Colonial cinema and ethnography expanded in the 1920s. The blacks and their exotic settings were filmed subjects consumed through European cinemas and televisions screens. They were restricted to this imagery in order to justify the civilizing project of the coloniser, who was determined to rebuke and deny Africa’s ancestry and ancient civilisations. 

Les statues meurent aussi, de Chris MarkerLes statues meurent aussi, de Chris Marker

In his film “Les statues meurent aussi (Staues also die)” Chris Marker recalls the pillaging of Africa by the West and highlights the threat of extinction faced by this longstanding civilisation. In 1950, the young French director Réné Vautier, released the first anti-colonial film: “Africa 50”. In this work, he denounces the negative implications and the cruelty of colonial power. It is notable that the film’s black subject is shown, protected and represented with humanity.

Jean Rouch, who is considered as the pioneer of French ethno-cinema, would go even further. He let the black subject tell his own story, notably with the film “Moi, un noir (I, a Negro).” The filmed black subject very quickly becomes the narrator of his own history and a proponent of his own images. Moreover, the overriding prerogative of these films lies in the need to re-establish how Africa and Africans are viewed, by and amongst each other.

Malian director Souleymane Cissé highlights this in the biographical documentary made by Rithy Panh: “They filmed use like we were animals….I make films so that we can film ourselves as human beings”

II) Contemporary Storytelling

in 1955, the two Senegalese directors Paulin S. Veyra et Mamadou Sarr directed the film “Africa on the Seine” in Paris. In this work, there depict the lives of Africa students in France and, with this the world is exposed to the first images made by Africans. On the black continent, it is another Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène (most often cited as the first African fimmaker) who produces “Borom Sareth (The Man with the Cart)”. In this fictional tale, Ousmane Sembène attacks the colonial regime. 

Afrique sur Seine, Paulin S. VEYRA et Mamadou SARRAfrique sur Seine, Paulin S. VEYRA et Mamadou SARR

“One day, Africa will speak about itself and write its own history” proclaimed Patrice Lumumba, the Prime minister and key protagonist of the independence movement in Congo-Kinshasha who was assassinated in January 1961. These words reflect the will that drove Africans to take their position behind the camera, as above all they wanted to represent themselves. We see two generations of filmmakers emerging from this, the first directing its critique at the colonial enterprise (e.g Sembène or the Mauritanian Med Hondo) and the second taking on the post-independence authoritarian regimes (e.g. Souleymane Cissé).

The French filmmaker Claude Chabrol stated: “there are two types of filmmakers, the storytellers and the poets.” We can immediately connect the iconoclastic images of the former with African filmmakers who often avoid literal representation. Today, with the digital revolution and access to training, films are produced with more pronounced artistic elements.

The “poetic” style, whose lineage began as far back as the fiction based films of Djibril Diop Mambety or Samba Félix Ndiaye (the father of African Documentary), very quickly became the playground of filmmakers such as Abderrahmane Sissako, Haroun Mahamat Saleh as well as others.

 

Conclusion

More than fifty years after its birth, African cinema is still very much unknown and ignored. It has indeed garnered increased recognition within the last 30 years. However, its financial dependence on the North, questions of censorship and self-censorship (often more severe than the former) relegate it to the past. Urban and contemporary Africa is concerned with foreigner contexts. It is only within the last ten years that we see the emergence of African productions that connect “plot” (narration) and poetry in depicting the contemporary conditions of Africa.

We are can randomly cite several films such as Abderrahmane Sissako’s “Bamako”, by Karim Miské or Ibéa Atondi’s (Congo), “Un homme qui crie (A Screaming Man)” by Haroun Mahamat Saleh (Chad), “Une affaire de nègre  (Black Business)” by Oswald Lewat (Cameroon), “Un pas en avant les dessous de la corruption” by Sylvestre Amoussou (Benin) and « Rwanda pour mémoire (Memory from Rwanda” by Samba Félix Ndiaye (Senegal).

Translation:  Yesomi Umolu

by Rufin Mbou Mikima
Afroscreen | 8 April 2011 | African cinema

 

PHOTO ESSAY: Johannesburg, South Africa//Meadowlands--Soweto 1852 > Kameelah R. Artist Blog

Johannesburg, South Africa //

Meadowlands--Soweto 1852

 

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KAMEELAH J. RASHEED is a conceptual artist, photographer, writer, and youth educator based in Brooklyn, New York. 

Kameelah was born in 1985 in East Palo Alto, CA (SF/Bay Area). She has lived in Cape Town, South Africa as an exchange student, Johannesburg, South Africa as an Amy Biehl U.S. Fulbright Scholar, and Washington, D.C. as a Harry S Truman Scholar. 

Her work has been exhibited in several group shows in New York, California, and Washington, D.C. Her photography has appeared in a number of print and online publications including ITCH Magazine, Transitions: An International Review, F-Stop Magazine, Make/Shift Magazine, Liberator Magazine blog, and Sokwenele. 

She is also the co-founder of Mambu Badu, a photography collective for emerging female photographers of African descent. She is also a visual arts intern for Liberator Magazine where she is working on a series of interviews on NY-based artists. 

A published writer, her essay "Lines of Bad Grammar" is featured in the book I Speak for Myself: American Women on Being Muslim. Her writing has also been published in The Nation (online), Make/Shift Magazine, Liberator Magazine (online), Pambazuka: Pan-African Voices for Freedom and Justice, and WireTap Magazine.

Now Reading

+ Welcome to Our Hillbrow: A Novel on Post-Apartheid South Africa, Phaswane Mpe

+ Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, Harriet A. Washington

 

 

ENVIRONMENT + VIDEO: Earth Reporters > AFRICA IS A COUNTRY

Earth Reporters

I really like the Earth Reporters Initiative, a series of half hour videos that combine old school TV journalism with “first-hand insights.” Basically an environmental crisis is narrated by someone close to it. I was lucky to see the first episode, “My City, Your City,” featuring Cheikh Mamadou Abiboulaye Dieye, the mayor of St Louis in Senegal, “the city most threatened by rising sea levels in the whole of Africa.” I watched it on TV, on BBC World, while in Toronto, which you can’t get on cable in the US–you get the more “entertaining” BBC America. The St Louis episode follow Dieye around the city, among the rubbish dumps and garbage, as he prepares to go to the recent World Mayors Summit in Mexico City. Above is the first 5 minutes.

You can watch all the rest of the episode, and the rest of the series here.

 

EVENT: National Prisoner Book Day—Why National Prisoner Book Day

Why National Prisoner Book Day

 

Rev. Brondon Reems, Marvin X and Ptah Mitchell prepare books for delivery to Alameda Country Juvenile Hall.
photo Gene Hazzard, Oakland Post Newspaper

At what point will it become crystal clear black men and women are in virtual slavery under the US Constitution? 

We are originating National Prisoner Book Day to call attention to the plight of prisoners in the USA, especially the high rate of Blacks in American prisons and jails. Over 90% suffered drug abuse at the time of arrest. Many suffer drug abuse and mental illness, the dual diagnosed. More that 50% lacked proper legal representation at their conviction. On May 20, we are calling for the public to send books to those incarcerated in jails, prisons, juvenile halls and mental institutions. This is the very least we can do. Malcolm X, George Jackson, Tookie Williams and Eldridge Cleaver are examples of men who transformed their lives by reading while in prison. We are designating May 20, the day after Malcolm's birthday as National Prisoner Book Day. Purchase a book and have it sent to a prisoner. Make his/her day!

 

 

OP-ED: What's The Truth About The Killing Of Ben Laden

Freedom Rider:

First Casualty of War

 

 

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

All that is certain, is that you should never believe anything the U.S. government tells you –and certainly not the second and third versions of the event. The depths of official U.S. duplicity (triplicity?) are so staggering, they may never be plumbed. “We do know that people were assassinated in a planned execution and there was never any intent of putting them on trial as civilized nations usually do.”

 

Now that bin Laden is dead we have the American passion for bloodlust on full display.”

 

The past month has been a difficult one for anyone who wants to be at all knowledgeable about our world. First it was necessary to avoid the endless and endlessly useless reporting of the British royal wedding. No sooner had that media monstrosity ended when we were told that the United States government had succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden. The orgy of hatred and rancid triumphalism was immediate and a sickening sight to behold. Crowds of rabid Americans descended upon “ground zero” the world trade center site, to wave flags and chant as if they were the winning football team.

 

While the savagery was on full display, so were the lies. The version of events kept changing as the week went on. First we were told that bin Laden resisted and was shot as a result of that resistance. Then he was using a woman as a shield. Both claims were then refuted. First, his safe house was worth $1 million dollars and he was “living high on the hog.” Now it turns out that the home was worth approximately $250,000 and was shabby and dirty, a bit like a home on a reality show about hoarders.

 

Mansion or hoarded home? Fighter or hiding behind his wife’s skirt? We will never know. We do know that all the inhabitants of the house were not captured. It turns out that because a navy SEAL helicopter broke down it prevented the commandos from capturing bin Laden’s wife and daughter and other occupants. The Pakistanis have them in protective custody and so far refuse to allow the Americans to interrogate them.

 

The version of events kept changing as the week went on.”

 

We don’t know what is true. We don’t know if the president and his team, as first reported, watched the entire attack in real time, or if what CIA director Leon Panetta now says is true. “I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn't know just exactly what was going on.” We do know that people were assassinated in a planned execution and there was never any intent of putting them on trial as civilized nations usually do.

 

The killing has exposed the dark underbelly of American society. The outside group, in this case Muslims, are supposed to disassociate themselves from their members, proclaiming loudly that they are glad bin Laden is dead and they can prove their loyalty. Of course, Christians and Jews don’t have to proclaim denunciation of the occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya which were planned by their co-religionists.

 

This ugliness has been put on hold for the last ten years. Bin Laden was a specter used to justify unspeakable acts but he was still just a specter. Now that he is dead we have the American passion for bloodlust on full display.

 

Having succeeded where Bush failed, Obama strutted his way into New York City, meeting firefighters and other deified first responders making the case for more death. The corporate media keep up their dirty work with bizarre and ludicrous portrayals of the SEAL team. Newsweek calls them “the coolest guys in the world” who are the “America’s quietest killers.” The New York Times calls them “elite of the elite” and “all-stars.”

 

Bin Laden was a specter used to justify unspeakable acts but he was still just a specter.”

 

There is no longer any pretense of a civilized nation run by civilian authority.

 

We were treated to an ordinary photo of the president and his staff but it was immediately dubbed “iconic.” Hillary Clinton felt compelled to claim that allergies caused her to show some emotion upon seeing the video or photos or whatever it is she actually saw. Her decision to tell a strange tale was unnecessary and a reminder of why she, a bad liar unlike Obama, is secretary of state and not president.

 

So now we have years of the Obama the conqueror theme to watch and hopefully not be nauseated by. The disarray of the Republican party made his re-election probable and now he is the bin Laden killer. His only disappointment is that he didn’t succeed in killing Muammar Gaddafi that same weekend. Well, even a Teflon president can’t always win.

 

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.

 

__________________________

The Big Lie:

Torture Got Bin Laden

Dave Weigel predicts Republican spin:

Expect to hear more about this report that the information that led to the tailing of bin Laden's courier, and eventually to his death, was acquired in interrogations that Obama ended once he took office. It may not be Republican candidates pointing this out. They don't need to. George W. Bush has a considerable amen chorus in the press, with former staffers like Marc Thiessen, Michael Gerson, and John Yoo writing regular columns about how the 43rd president was right.

Predict it? It's already become a meme. Last night, O'Reilly simply said "What about the waterboarding?" before moving on to other issues. A military reader writes how Fox is leading with the torture lie:

Driving right now - flipped on Fox News Channel out of curiosity on Sirius.  Since 07h30, they have been openly encouraging waterboarding and have at least 6 times that I've noticed said that the reason we got OBL is directly attributable to what had been revealed during waterboarding sessions.  I am, in two words, fucking disgusted.

Here's Andrew Malcolm:

That previous president authorized enhanced interrogation techniques which convinced folks like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to give up, among many other things, the name of their top-secret courier, now deceased.

Leave aside the horrifying fact that Republicans, seeking to score some ownership of this triumph, would look to torture as their contribution. Why not the beefed up on-the-ground intelligence from 2005 on? That's Bush's legacy that Obama built on. Besides, there is no evidence that it played any part whatsoever. From the NYT:

Prisoners in American custody told stories of a trusted courier. When the Americans ran the man’s pseudonym past two top-level detainees — the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; and Al Qaeda’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi — the men claimed never to have heard his name. That raised suspicions among interrogators that the two detainees were lying and that the courier probably was an important figure.

My italics. So in torturing these two men, interrogators got nothing of substance. In fact, it was only by assuming that these men were lying under torture that the investigation continued. It was subsequently, during normal interrogations that KSM gave us a central clue:

Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

To repeat: in the one instance we now clearly know about, the CIA is telling us that torture gave them lies. Which they were. Only when traditional interrogation was used did we get the actual names of the couriers. Marcy Wheeler looks at the current data set:

We can conclude that either KSM shielded the courier’s identity entirely until close to 2007, or he told his interrogators that there was a courier who might be protecting bin Laden early in his detention but they were never able to force him to give the courier’s true name or his location, at least not until three or four years after the waterboarding of KSM ended. That’s either a sign of the rank incompetence of KSM’s interrogators (that is, that they missed the significance of a courier protecting OBL), or a sign he was able to withstand whatever treatment they used with him.

Follow up here. Jane Mayer's thoughts. Brian Beutler focuses on the flaws in the AP story torture apologists latched onto. Meanwhile, Rumsfeld himself has denied that torture played any role in finding bin Laden:

“It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.”

What really broke the case? From the NYT:

Operation Cannonball, a [2005] bureaucratic reshuffling ... placed more C.I.A. case officers on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan. With more agents in the field, the C.I.A. finally got the courier’s family name. With that, they turned to one of their greatest investigative tools — the National Security Agency began intercepting telephone calls and e-mail messages between the man’s family and anyone inside Pakistan. From there they got his full name. Last July, Pakistani agents working for the C.I.A. spotted him driving his vehicle near Peshawar.

Old-fashioned, painstaking, labor-intensive intelligence work. The American way. We never needed to stoop to bin Laden's standards to get bin Laden. We needed merely to follow our long-tested humane procedures.

(Photo: Newspapers left by visitors grace the fence overlooking the crash site of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on May 2, 2011 following the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan. Nearly 10 years after September 11, 2001, construction is underway to erect a formal memorial at the crash site.  By Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

__________________________

How Illegal Interrogations

Hurt the U.S.

Some are arguing that intel obtained from detainees under torture led us to bin Laden. But Andrea Prasow says that had we stuck to lawful tactics, we might have found him even sooner.

When I was a defense attorney in the Office of Military Commissions in Guantanamo, President Obama issued an executive order on interrogation policy that ended the CIA’s secret detention program and required that all US interrogators comply with the Army Field Manual. He also ordered the closure of Guantanamo within one year.

Article - Prasow Torture DebateA detainee is escorted by guards in a facility at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base on March 30, 2010. (Photo: Brennan Linsley / AP Photo)After the order was issued, I taped it to my office door and highlighted the portion that said, “the detention facilities at Guantanamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” I truly believed the U.S. had closed the door on abusive detention and interrogation forever.

This week, following mixed reports that information obtained from detainees held in those secret prisons may have been used in the years-long process to locate Osama bin Laden, torture apologists have seized on this information to call for the reopening of the CIA prisons and reauthorization of "enhanced interrogation techniques"–a euphemism for torture and other ill-treatment. Their primary argument has been simply that torture works.

Whether torture can produce some truthful information has never been the right question. It can. But even if the victim of torture does provide some accurate information, there is no way to sift the truth from lies produced as the detainee merely tries to get interrogators to stop. There’s no way to know which lead is worth pursuing–risking human life and limited resources – and which should be disregarded. And by resorting to torture, experienced interrogators report, less truthful information can be produced than if traditional, lawful techniques were used. Results also come more slowly because detainees buckle down and resist. Former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who interrogated Abu Zubaydah among others, testified before Congress that the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques “are ineffective, slow, and unreliable, and as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al Qaeda.”

National security is diminished by the false leads torture can produce, and devastating consequences may ensue. When Ibn Sheikh al Libi was tortured while in CIA custody, he claimed a link to Iraq and weapons of mass destruction that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used in his speech to the United Nations to justify the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Of course, as we now know, that information was utterly false.

Each time the U.S. has strayed from core values there have been national security consequences.

By contrast, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was arrested for the attempted Christmas bombing of a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit, he provided intelligence to the FBI immediately upon his apprehension, despite being interrogated in a purportedly lawful manner. He continued to do so after he was charged. The Department of Justice has touted the significant intelligence obtained from L’Houssaine Kherchtou, an early member of al Qaeda. He has not only provided valuable information, but hastestified in the trials of numerous terrorism suspects, including that of Ahmed Ghailani, a Tanzanian convicted of conspiracy in U.S. federal court in November 2010 and now serving life in prison for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa. Many others have provided and continue to provide information to U.S. authorities used in preventing terrorist attacks and prosecuting terrorism suspects, without the use of coercive interrogation techniques.

While the killing of Osama bin Laden may help protect the U.S. from terrorism, as much or more credit should go to the Obama administration’s decision to shut down the Bush-era CIA interrogation program. Under this secret program, the details of which are still not fully disclosed, the U.S. abandoned the rule of law and embraced a system of detention and interrogation that was not only illegal and immoral, but severely damaged U.S. national security.

In fact, each time the U.S. has strayed from core values there have been national security consequences. Senior military officials report that foreign fighters joined the war in Iraq following the release of the Abu Ghraib abuse photos, and the continued existence of Guantanamo has been used as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda. Earlier this year when a detainee died at Guantanamo of apparently natural causes, the fact that it happened at Guantanamo made it a major focal point for anti-U.S. and militant propaganda. The Taliban issued a statement condemning the U.S. for violating international law and thousands attended his funeral in Afghanistan.

We will never know how much information the U.S. lost because it failed to use time-tested, effective, and humane methods of interrogation. We will never know how many years earlier bin Laden could have been captured and how many lives spared if, instead of whisking them off to a prison outside the law, the U.S. had instead charged Mohammed and al Libi in federal courts and treated them properly and in accordance with due process. We do know that bin Laden’s death does not end the threat terrorists pose to the U.S. and other nations. But we also know that the best way to guard against future attack is by rejecting the use of torture outright and staying faithful to the rule of law and basic tenets of decency. This is true not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it works. 

Andrea J. Prasow is senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch.

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.

>via: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-07/does-torture-work-h...

 

 

VIDEO: Today’s Birthdays - 5/13/11 (Stevie Wonder) > Shadow and Act

Today’s Birthdays - 5/13/11

Stevie Wonder

A big Happy Birthday goes out to singer Stevland Hardaway Morris also known as Stevie Wonder!  He turns 61 today.  Although he’s not an actor, the Michigan native’s music has appeared on an endless list of film and tv productions.  A few on that list…The Woman In Red, The Last Dragon, Fame, School Daze, Round Midnight, Designing Women, Poetic Justice, Mulan, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Glee, The West Wing, The Wire, Next Friday, The Best Man, Wild Wild West, The Outsiders, Shrek Forever After, Valentine’s Day, and much more. 

He also composed the complete soundtrack and film score for Spike Lee‘s film Jungle Fever.

 

VIDEO: 2 Cent “Every Book” Live > 2-cent.com

EVERY BOOK - 2 CENT

2-Cent is a collaborative effort of creative, frustrated, and comedic twenty-somethings. They all posses the innate ability to convey humor and urgency toward issues that plague not only New Orleans, but America in general. 2-Cent is a PBS documentary, an SNL skit and an In Living Color spoof all rolled into one. This series displays a wealth of information and gives a first-hand look at the issues Katrina exposed. Side-splitting laughter will overwhelm you even though relatively serious issues are tackled on the show, such as race, poverty, and sex.

<p>What is 2-Cent? from brandan Odums on Vimeo.</p>

Equipped with social consciousness, music as the backdrop, and the cold hard facts, they have gained a loyal following, and won coveted awards, including an FYI 2008 NAACP award, and FYI Silverdocs: AFI Discovery Channel Documentary Film Festival Award for documentary filmmaking excellence. Mostly web-based, the show wrapped up last season on air in local New Orleans with ABC proving that they are making big strides and praise-worthy “edutainment.”

Posted On: May 11, 2011

2 Cent performed one of its most popular songs live at A.L. Davis Park for the Dj Captain Charles Annual Easter Egg Hunt. 
This was the first time we were ever asked to do such a thing, and we had a blast. lol. I recall one kid asking his mother “mom is that the real people?” his mother responded “yeah thats them” lol.

 

PUB: Call for Poems/ Stories: Coming Out Muslim|Writers Afrika

Call for Poems/Stories:

Coming Out Muslim

 

Deadline: 23 May 2011

You are invited to share your poems, stories, images, artistic works, photographs, desires, hopes, interviews and more honoring and celebrating the wide ranging experiences/realities and dreams of Queer Muslims.

Your submission will be included in a Visual Collage/ Photography show entitled: "Coming Out Muslim" in New York.

The show will live at the 7th St and 2nd Ave Gallery housed in the social room of the Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village for LGBT History and Pride month this June.

This is part of a larger vision celebrating Islam and Queer experience life with the intention of broadening all our perspectives and opportunities for lives we love -in all of our communities - local and global!

Please share this announcement widely to your contacts and network and send your ideas/questions/suggestions to the coordinators of this project at: comingoutmuslim@googlegroups.com

Deadline to submit: 5/23/11.

All contributors are welcome to be a part of designing the collage and arrangement of images and words in the Gallery.

Anonymous submissions welcome.

Contact Information:

For inquiries: comingoutmuslim@googlegroups.com

For submissions: comingoutmuslim@googlegroups.com

Website: http://groups.google.com/group/comingoutmuslim

 

 

PUB: A Gathering Of The Tribes - Submissions

Submissions

Magazine

We are now accepting submissions for Tribes Magazine Issue 14.

A Gathering of the Tribes seeks submissions for its 14th issue. Our focus is on outstanding literary and critical work from emerging and established writers with an emphasis on multiculturalism and alternative viewpoints. All genres and styles considered though we generally do not publish “genre” fiction (romance, science fiction, children’s literature, etc.) or metrical poetry or rhyme unless it is exceedingly contemporary/experimental. Writers documenting alternative forms of experience or from diverse backgrounds strongly encouraged to submit. Submit manuscripts (under 20 pages) to: A GATHERING OF THE TRIBES, P.O. Box 20693, Tompkins Square Station, New York, NY 10009 or email your submission to info@tribes.org with “Submission” in the subject.

Website

We publish poetry, fiction, essays and interviews on our website year-round. Please email us with Subject Line: Web Submissions with your attachment in a Word doc only.

General : Due to the massive number of submissions we receive, we do not guarantee response to, or return of work that is not accepted for publication.

You are guaranteed a response only if your work is selected for publication.