PUB: Ascent Aspirations Anthology - Poetry/Flash Fiction Contest

Ascent Aspirations Publishing

Ascent Aspirations Spring 2012 Anthology

Poetry/Flash Fiction Contest

The anthology will be published by April 2012.

We have decided to create one anthology a year in the spring. For 2011 our theme was The Celebration of Work and that anthology can be purchased now. Email ascentaspirations@shaw.ca GO TO Close to Quitting Time

This year's contest with a publication date of April 2012 is now open for submissions.

 

THEME

Our theme is DISORDERS. These disorders can be for example alcohol/substance abuse, anxiety, bipolar, depression, eating disorders, OCD, PTSD, schizophrenia, disociative disorders, sexual disorders, sleep disorders and on and on. We are looking for poetry and flash fiction that touches on this theme in any way and comments on the human condition. The writer can interpret the theme very broadly and come at it from whatever direction he or she wishes.

 

 

 

 

Contest closing date is November 10th, 2011 (Cover Art Tentative)

The anthology (ISBN) will be judged and compiled for the spring of 2012. Email

 

The publication will be a perfect-bound book (ISBN rather than ISSN) with a colour art designed cover.

First Prize for Poetry - $100 (CND) & 1 copy of the anthology

First Prize for Flash Fiction - $100 (CND) & 1 copy of the anthology

Second Prize for Poetry - $50 (CND) & 1 copy of the anthology

Second Prize for Flash Fiction - $50 (CND) & 1 copy of the anthology

Third Prize for Poetry - $25 (CND) & 1 copy of the anthology

Third Prize for Flash Fiction - $25 (CND) & 1 copy of the anthology


Plus 6 - $10 (CND) honourable mention awards with 1 copy of the anthology

Plus all additional contributors in the collection will receive one copy of the anthology.

The goal is for the contest to generate the costs for publishing the anthology. If the entry fees and sales of the anthology exceed the costs, then the additional money will be used to fund future print anthologies with prize money being more widely distributed among all the authors who appear in the anthology.

Rules & Guidelines:

The anthology will contain poetry and flash fiction.  

Poems and flash fiction can be published elsewhere as long as the author holds the copyright or unpublished and not sent elsewhere. Submit your poem(s)/flash fiction with a brief bio,
by e-mail to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
.

In the subject heading say Spring 2012 Disorders Anthology.

By mail with your contest fee include a cover page with the poem(s)/flash fiction title(s) and the first line beside each title, your name, address, phone number and e-mail. IN ADDITION ALSO INCLUDE EACH POEM/FLASH FICTION ON A SEPARATE PAGE WITHOUT YOUR NAME. We will be using the printed copies of your poems for judging and the electronic copies sent by email for the designing of the book pages should you be included in the anthology.

 Maximum length of each poem is 60 lines and spaces between the stanzas count as lines. The maximum length for flash fiction is 800 words.

Contest Fee: $5 for one poem or 3 poems for $10. $10 for each piece of flash fiction. You can send as many poems/flash fiction pieces as you wish.

Send your entry information, and POEMS/FLASH FICTION with payment to:

either David Fraser, or Ascent Aspirations Publishing

1560 Arbutus Drive

Nanoose Bay, BC

V9P 9C8

Please do not send a SASE as in the past, as we will be publishing the winners' list on the web and will notify everyone.

All submissions will remain the copyright of the author.

*Additional copies of the perfect-bound anthology will be available at time of publication.

Retail Prices without shipping costs $18.95 CND/18.95 US

 The prices of additional copies including shipping and handling are as follows:

In Canada and USA ($19.95 CND and 22.95 US)

To Other International Destinations ($24.95 US)

Advanced Ordering of the Spring 2012 Issue can be done by email.

Pricing at this point is an estimate based on current postal rates and may be subject to slight changes without notice when advanced ordering is announced.

Help make the Spring 2012 Anthology a successful not-for–profit venture.

Ascent Aspirations Magazine original Logo

Ascent Aspirations Publishing

 

  

 

INTERVIEW: Joycelyn Elders Puts Congress on Blast > The Root

Joycelyn Elders

Puts Congress on Blast

As social conservatives push cuts for reproductive health services, the outspoken former surgeon general says that not much has changed since her '90s battle with them.


To the relief of many on the political left, last week's budget negotiations ended in a compromise that spared funding for Planned Parenthood. Republicans targeted the family planning agency -- one of the largest recipients of Title X, the federal grant program dedicated to reproductive health services for low-income patients -- because it provides abortions, among other preventive health care services. Although no federal funds under the program are used for abortion, during the tense 2011 budget talks, more than $300 million in cuts to Title X were on the line.

On Thursday, House Republicans continued the fight by voting for a stand-alone resolution to defund Planned Parenthood, a measure that the Senate promptly voted down. But as bigger negotiations loom concerning the 2012 budget and the debt ceiling, conservatives in Congress have signaled that their mission isn't over. It's a political climate all too familiar to Dr. Joycelyn Elders.

Elders, who served as the first African-American U.S. surgeon general for 15 months during the Clinton administration, was a polarizing figure during her days in Washington. Although her advocacy of condoms in high schools rankled conservatives, she shocked much of the country when she was asked, at a 1994 United Nations conference on AIDS, about promoting masturbation to prevent young people from engaging in risky sexual activity. "I think that it is part of human sexuality," Elders replied, "and perhaps it should be taught." Amid ensuing outrage, she was forced to resign.

Today Elders, 77, is a retired professor emeritus of pediatric endocrinology at the University of Arkansas who continues to address sexual health on the lecture circuit. Feisty as ever, she spoke to The Root about the current battle over women's health, why she thinks she was right in the '90s, and why she's so tired of lawmakers "playing vaginal politics" that she could "just vomit."

The Root: When you were surgeon general in 1994, Republicans had just taken over the House of Representatives with a socially conservative agenda. Watching the current debate in the House over Title X funding, are you experiencing déjà vu?

Joycelyn Elders: It certainly does remind me of that time, and it's an indication of just how far we have notcome. We're still in the same spot almost. But I think today women are more aware of what's at stake, and because of that we've got to stand up and fight back, especially African-American women.

TR: What do you think is at stake exactly?

JE: If you're rich and don't have to worry about it, then nothing. Except for the fact that you will have a lot more poor, uneducated women with children to support. What's at stake is that these women wouldn't have contraceptives, we would have less STD testing, less pelvic exams, fewer cervical-cancer screenings, less breast exams, less testing for diabetes. Planned Parenthood and Title X funding goes to women's health, not abortion. The mean income for most women who go to a Title X clinic is less than $10,830 a year. That's poor.

TR: As Congress moves on to debate over the 2012 budget, it's very likely that Planned Parenthood will be on the chopping block again. Is this a mostly symbolic debate to get the Republican base revved up, with no chance of passing? 

JE: Any woman who has a congressperson who votes against women's reproductive rights is headed back to the Dark Ages, when they were owned by their husbands. The fact that we have these votes [in Congress] alone is a threat. We're still fighting. We've always had to fight. It wasn't until 1965 that we had the right to even use contraceptives, and even then you had to be married and get permission from your husband.

You bright young people -- and I love you -- but you don't know what it was like for us old folk, when you couldn't have birth control pills, when condoms were not as readily available and we didn't have all the other contraceptives that are now on the market. I think if the women of this country -- whether black, white, young, old, Democrat or Republican -- cause the reproductive rights of any of our citizens to be lost, then we should never forgive ourselves.

TR: Is this an issue that you think Democrats will go to the mat for and defend?

JE: If the Democrats do not go to the mat and defend women's reproductive health, I think that the loss will be greater than the loss of their jobs next election season. As old and tired as I am, even I would go out campaigning. I think they know that, too.

TR: What are your thoughts on the budget compromise that was reached last week, in which Planned Parenthood funding was spared, but Washington, D.C., lost the right to use local money to help women access abortions?

JE: I think that's a horrible compromise. It's another blow against poor women, young women or women who have very little control over their reproductive lives. For Congress to make that kind of recommendation makes no sense. We spend $9 billion a year taking care of children born to children, and then they talk about saving money. If they really wanted to save money, we would talk about comprehensive health education and make reproductive services, including abortion, available for women.

TR: Budget negotiations aside, do you think President Obama is doing enough to address the needs of women for reproductive services and health care?

JE: I think President Obama would like to do an awful lot more than he's done, but he's burdened down with three wars, a marked decline in our economic situation and the job losses. I think he's doing the best he can.

For example, [American political leaders had] been trying for 100 years to pass a health care bill of some sort. What President Obama signed was not complete, but I was very pleased that we at least got a bill that we can improve. And legislators are still out there trying to put riders on that so that the health exchanges in the states can't offer and pay for abortions. I'm so tired of them playing vaginal politics that I could just vomit.

TR: Do you think attitudes about sexuality and contraception have evolved since 1994?

JE: I think our attitude toward sexuality certainly is evolving, and that's because more people are better educated. We were operating under a theory at that time that ignorance is bliss. Now we know that by sitting around and saying our children aren't having sex, what we're doing is sacrificing them to unplanned pregnancies, HIV and [sexually transmitted infections].

A [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] study in 2008 said that 25 percent of all 14- to 19-year-old girls have an STI, and among black girls it's up to 49 percent. So we need to teach them how to protect themselves. Other countries can do it. Why can't we?

TR: Talking to teens about contraception is one thing. The last straw with you in 1994 was your remark about possibly teaching masturbation. I suspect that wouldn't go over much better today.

JE: I think you're right, but we're at least talking about it much more. Back then, everybody was acting like this was a word they'd never heard. Everybody does it, but nobody admits to it. If everybody in Congress who'd ever masturbated in their life would turn green, then we would have a green Congress. That's true for the whole country, and other countries, too.

TR: But given that you were the surgeon general in the midst of a culture war in Washington, did you ever think about toning down your ideas to avoid potential backlash?

JE: No. That never occurred to me in any way, shape or form. I felt that I was a surgeon general for the people of this country, and especially adolescents. I was doing what I thought had to be done at that time to improve education and access to services for adolescent youngsters, and I think we did some of that.

There was a lot of progress made. Not as much in the area of comprehensive health education as I would have liked, but I think we made progress in other areas. Over the past 20 years, teen pregnancy has dropped by almost 40 percent.

TR: What do you make of your firing then?

JE: I feel, even to this day, that President Clinton didn't have any real problems with anything I said or did. I feel that he was trying to get some other issues through, such as improving our economic situation and the environment. If he was having to spend all of his time defending Joycelyn Elders, well, then, it was better to let me go. He knew that I was not going to change -- I'd worked for him for six years [as director of the Arkansas Department of Health]. And I didn't really have any bad feelings in regard to what he did.

TR: Given that you're an older, Southern African-American woman, people might expect your attitudes toward sexuality and sexual health to be more conservative. What life experiences shaped your frank and open approach to discussing these matters?

JE: I grew up in a small, rural farming community, and nobody ever talked to me about sex or sexuality. My parents didn't sit me down at the kitchen table, but they demonstrated to me all the time the importance of honesty, integrity and treating everybody right. That was demonstrated to me every day in everything they did.

I realized as I got older how much I didn't know. But my thoughts about women's health come from the values that I grew up with. Reproductive rights are just an extension of every other kind of justice and right there is.

Cynthia Gordy is The Root's Washington reporter.


 

PUB: Children's Story Contest

Children's Story Contest
Children's Story Contest Poster

To Benefit "The Old School House Arts Centre, Qualicum Beach, British Columbia
T.O.S.H.

Ascent Aspirations Publishing is seeking contributions for a unique volume of previously unpublished children’s stories with representative fine art. Stories should be directed to ages 9 to 12 and be of approximately 1500 words. Ten stories will be published with a prize of $200 for the best entry.

After selection, artists-in-residence from T.O.S.H. (The Old School House) will create fine art works to represent the stories. Our goal is to produce a special book that will give children great stories and exposure to a range of contemporary and original artistic styles. All profits will go to support T.O.S.H., a non-profit community arts centre in Qualicum Beach, BC.

Contest closes October 31, 2011.

Please send electronic entries to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca either in the body of the e-mail or as a word.doc. Put “Children’s Story” in the subject heading.

Also send your entry fee of $10.00 and a hard copy submission to

Ascent Aspirations Publishing
1560 Arbutus Drive
Nanoose Bay, BC
V9P9C8

 


Email: Ascent Aspiration Publishing

 

HAITI: The Legacy of Haitian Feminist Paulette Poujol-Oriol > Ms Magazine Blog

The Legacy of Haitian Feminist

Paulette Poujol-Oriol

March 29, 2011 by Gina Ulysse · 3 Comments 

Paulette Poujol-Oriol, who died March 11 at age 84, left her birth country, Haiti, a legacy that is immeasurable. She was one of Haiti’s most ardent feminist leaders, as well as an unmatched cultural producer and worker.

She was born in Port-au-Prince on May 12, 1926 to Joseph Poujol, founder of the Commercial Institute, and Augusta Auxila, a homemaker. The family migrated to France when she was eight months old. Poujol-Oriol spent six formative years in Paris, where her parents were engaged in the worlds of commerce, education and theater. She credited this time in Paris as instrumental to her development as a renaissance woman.

Poujol-Oriol began her school studies at the École Normale Supérieure in Port-au-Prince, then went on to Jamaica where she attended the London Institute of Commerce and Business Administration. She started to teach at her father’s institute at the age of 16. With additional studies in education, she dedicated herself to teaching, but never stopped her own learning. In addition to being fluent in French, Kreyol and Spanish, she eventually learned and mastered English, Italian and German.

But aside from teaching, Poujol-Oriol was writing. She published her first novel, Le Creuset (The Crucible) in 1980, winning the Prix Henri Deschamps–just the second woman to have ever received that prestigious Haitian literary award. Another work, La Fleur Rouge (The Red Flower) was awarded Radio France Internationale’s Best Novel award in 1988. Her novel Le Passage (Vale of Tears) was translated into English with a forward by well-known Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat.

And aside from teaching and writing, Poujol-Orio was an actress and playwright, as well as the director and founder of Haiti’s Piccolo Teatro, which introduced children to the theatre arts. Over the course of her life as a prolific writer, relentless artist and activist, she became one of Haiti’s most highly acclaimed women, a recipient of acknowledgements and awards too numerous to name.

As a staunch feminist activist, she battled for Haitian women’s causes and visibility in her writing as well as in practice. At a very young age, she defied gendered and classed restrictions, possessing a hunger for knowledge–encouraged by her parents–that surpassed social expectations of young women of her class. These made her a recognizable intellectual force. In an interview on Thomas Spear’s Ile en ile, Poujol-Oriol recalls being steered towards gentler literature by booksellers astonished by her ferocious passion for French classics. The sense that less is expected of women and that they should be invisible motivated many of her undertakings.

In many ways, Poujol-Oriol was both a product of her privileged socio-economic background as well as a challenge to its strictures. Highly visible and engaged in the world, she insisted on keeping her name when she married, bore two children, divorced and remarried–at a time when such practices (keeping your own name, divorcing, remarrying) were frowned upon in Haiti. All the while, she continued to pursue her art and social interests.

In 1950, she became a member of the Ligue Féminine d’Action Sociale (Women’s League for Social Action)- the organization founded in 1934 to advance women’s rights in Haiti. She served as president of the League from 1997 until her death. She was also a founding member of several women’s associations, including L’Alliance des Femmes Haitiennes (Alliance of Haitian Women), an umbrella organization that coordinates more than fifty women’s groups.

Baruch College professor and Haitian sociologist Carolle Charles met Poujol-Oriol in 2005 at the Caribbean and Latin American conference on women and citizenship. She remembers her “as a feminist organizer [who] also knew about the fragility of Haitian institutions, thus her strong support to newer feminist organizations.” That gathering was organized by Haiti’s only feminist research center, Enfofanm, directed by Myriam Merlet–one of the four well-known feminists who perished in the 2010 earthquake. At the conference, Poujol-Oriol, a member of the board of directors of Enfofanm, received a life achievement award for her contribution to the Haitian women’s movement. Her “level of commitment to the women movement,” says Charles, “was uncompromising.”

In Haiti these days, with the contested elections run-off and the return of exiled former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Paulette Poujol-Oriol’s passing has received less attention than it truly deserves. She was a much beloved intellectual mother to hundreds of students, who called her mommy. She is survived by her actual son, physician Georges Michel, who resides in Haiti, and her daughter, Claudine Michel a professor of education and black studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. In Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste, her son is quoted saying, “She had lots of projects (plays, novels) [in the works]. Even at her age, she continued to write.”

Poujol-Oriol inspired generations of Haitian writers, artists and feminist activists. Speaking of her loss, Charles paraphrases the popular Haitian saying, “she came from a small country, but a great nation.” Then she added what other obituaries consistently insist: “She stood against injustice and inequality. She was a “poto mitan”–a formidable central pillar.

Photo courtesy of lehman.cuny.edu.

 

EVENT: New York City—Filmmaker in Focus: Euzhan Palcy > MoMA

Filmmaker in Focus: Euzhan Palcy

May 18–30, 2011

View related film screenings

Euzhan Palcy (b. Martinique, 1958), who in 1989 became the first black woman director to have her work produced by a major Hollywood studio (with MGM’s A Dry White Season), explores themes of race, gender, and politics from a decidedly feminist perspective. This first U.S. retrospective of Palcy’s work includes a newly restored print of her Rue Cases-Nègres (Sugar Cane Alley), which won a Silver Lion award at the 1983 Venice Film Festival, along with the New York premieres of Les Mariées de I’isles Bourbon (2007), an historical epic about forced marriage in 17th-century France; Parcours de Dissident (2006), about the forgotten history of West Indian patriots during World War II; Siméon (1992), a musical comedy fairytale set in the Caribbean; and the biographical documentary Aime Cesaire, A Voice for History (1994). The series also features A Dry White Season (1989), a key film on South African apartheid; and the made-for-television productions Ruby Bridges (1998), about segregation in New Orleans from the perspective of a young child; and The Killing Yard (2001), which explores events surrounding the 1971 Attica prison uprising. Miss Palcy and special guests will introduce a number of programs in the series.


Organized by Ron Magliozzi, Assistant Curator, and Anne Morra, Associate Curator, Department of Film.

The exhibition is made possible by The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

Related Film Screenings

Upcoming

 

INFO: This is a series of maps charting the shrinkage of Native American Lands > Somersaultr

Shrinkage of Native American Lands
Geronimo (far right) and his warriors, circa 1886
This is a series of maps charting the shrinkage of Native American lands over time, from 1784 to the present day.  Made because I was having trouble visualizing the sheer scale of the land loss, and reading numbers like “blah blah million acres” wasn’t really doing it for me.  The gif is based on a collection of maps by Sam B. Hilliard of Louisiana State University.  You can see the original map here. For those who do prefer dealing in numbers, here are some:  By 1881, Indian landholdings in the United States  had plummeted to 156 million acres.  By 1934, only about 50 million  acres remained (an area the size of Idaho and Washington) as a result of  the General Allotment Act* of 1887.  During World War II, the government  took 500,000 more acres for military use.  Over one hundred tribes,  bands, and Rancherias relinquished their lands under various acts of  Congress during the termination era of the 1950s. By 1955, the indigenous land base had shrunk to just 2.3 percent of its original size.  —In the Courts of the Conqueror by Walter Echo-Hawk * The General Allotment Act is also known as the Dawes Act. Edit: Got rid of some of the fold lines and discoloration on the gif.  *is anal*

This is a series of maps charting the shrinkage of Native American lands over time, from 1784 to the present day.  Made because I was having trouble visualizing the sheer scale of the land loss, and reading numbers like “blah blah million acres” wasn’t really doing it for me.  The gif is based on a collection of maps by Sam B. Hilliard of Louisiana State University.  You can see the original map here.

For those who do prefer dealing in numbers, here are some:

By 1881, Indian landholdings in the United States had plummeted to 156 million acres. By 1934, only about 50 million acres remained (an area the size of Idaho and Washington) as a result of the General Allotment Act* of 1887. During World War II, the government took 500,000 more acres for military use. Over one hundred tribes, bands, and Rancherias relinquished their lands under various acts of Congress during the termination era of the 1950s.

By 1955, the indigenous land base had shrunk to just 2.3 percent of its original size.

In the Courts of the Conqueror by Walter Echo-Hawk

* The General Allotment Act is also known as the Dawes Act.

Edit: Got rid of some of the fold lines and discoloration on the gif.  *is anal*

__________________________

Rites of Passage

Brian Huberman and Jerry Eagan were guests on the Voices of the West radio show last year. Eagan, Apache-country expert and historian, has been a guest on the show several times and has, in recent years, helped BH access the landscape he is so fascinated to explore in one of his latest film projects: Geronimo Country.

Brian in "Geronimo Country," led by his guide Jerry Eagan (shown in the distance)

Listen to the podcast to hear them paint a vivid picture of the physical landscape of this American wilderness, past and present, and explain some of the historical and political events that make this such a fascinating and dangerous place in America today.

Brian also discusses a bit about his personal background, his interest in the Western film genre and why this quest has him so determined to visit Skeleton Canyon, the site where Geronimo surrendered for a final time.

Other highlights: tactics Apaches used to throw Calvary members off their trail, Brian’s favorite Western film score composers and how Jerry, a Vietnam Vet living in Oregon, came to be an expert guide in the wilderness of New Mexico.

 

LIBYA: Did NATO Fail to Save African Migrants in Boat Off Libya? > TIME & The Guardian

Did NATO Leave 62 Africans

to Die at Sea Off Libya?

People board an International Organization of Migration ship in Misratah, Libya, on May 4, 2011

Christphe Simon / AFP / Getty Images
Did NATO pilots allow 62 Africans fleeing Libya to perish on the high seas because their mission did not include saving desperate migrants or because NATO's tangled bureaucracy had failed? That's the allegation roiling Europe after some of the handful of survivors, who drifted for weeks after a harrowing escape from Tripoli, told of having been spotted and then ignored by Western forces.

The survivors, whose story was broken in Britain's Guardian newspaper on Sunday, told of a group of 72 Africans migrants — men, women and a few children, from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and Nigeria — drifting on the Mediterranean for 16 days in late March and early April, as they watched their stocks of water and cookies steadily dwindle. Those supplies had been dropped onto their boat, they said, by a helicopter marked "ARMY," after its Ghanaian captain had phoned a refugee organization in Rome to send help. The organization quickly alerted Italian military authorities. (Watch TIME's video "Somali Refugees from Libya Put on a Show in Tunisia.")

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Somali Refugees from Libya Put On a Show in Tunisia

++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The helicopter pilot signaled to the passengers that a rescue vessel was on its way, the survivors said. It never arrived.

Days later, survivors say, two helicopters lifted off from a nearby warship — believed by Guardian reporters to have been France's Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier — and flew low over the refugee boat. The passengers held up the two babies onboard, to show the pilots the desperation of their plight. The pilots flew away.

Then, as the boat drifted, its fuel tanks empty, the passengers began to die of starvation, one by one, until just 10 were left alive. "Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard," Abu Kurke, an Ethiopian survivor, told the Guardian. By the end, he said, "Everyone was either praying or dying." One survivor perished shortly after the boat finally docked back in Libya, in government-held Zlitan, near Misratah, on April 10.

Despite the gruesome conditions, those aboard the stricken boat clung desperately to their humanity. After their parents died, the two infants were kept alive by others who were near death themselves. "We saved one bottle from the helicopter for the two babies and kept feeding them even after their parents had passed," explained Kurke, who said he survived by eating two tubes of toothpaste and drinking his own urine. "But after two days, the babies passed too, because they were so small."

The tragedy of the 62 migrants who died at sea was just one incident in a mounting death toll of Africans fleeing Libya across the Mediterranean. U.N. refugee officials estimate that about 800 African migrants have drowned trying to flee the conflict. On Monday, a boat carrying 600 people capsized off the Libyan coast, and U.N. officials say that about 400 people were rescued. Two separate boats, each believed to have been carrying hundreds of people, have simply vanished at sea in recent months. And on April 6, about 250 people drowned when their boat sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. (See pictures of Libya's rebels.)

But the fate of the passengers of the 72 migrants on the boat from Tripoli was especially troubling because of the claim that they were spotted on two occasions by coalition aircraft. "There was an abdication of responsibility," says Moses Zerai, a Rome-based Eritrean priest called by the boat captain for help before his satellite telephone's battery went dead. "That crime cannot go unpunished just because the victims were African migrants and not tourists on a cruise liner."

Stung by the accusation of indifference, NATO and E.U. officials have been scrambling to distance themselves from any blame for the fate of the 62 dead migrants. NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero told reporters in Brussels on Monday that "NATO vessels are fully aware of their responsibilities with regard to international maritime law on safety of lives at sea." French officials originally said the Charles de Gaulle had not been in the area, and then said they could not comment when the Guardian produced documents proving that the warship had been in that location.

Even before the allegations over the migrants, European officials had been on a collision course with refugee organizations because of their efforts to stanch the flood of migrants fleeing Libya as well as neighboring Tunisia. Hundreds of Tunisians have been turned back from Europe in recent months, and France has threatened to reimpose its border controls with Italy, removed decades ago under the E.U.'s Schengen agreement allowing document-free travel across the Continent, in order to stop the influx.

Most desperate among those fleeing the turmoil in Libya are hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans. Shortly before the no-fly zone was imposed in mid-March, I ventured into Tripoli's St. Francis of Assisi Church, where hundreds of illegal African migrants converge every day seeking legal help for themselves and detained friends and to swap information about how to get to Europe. "We have tried to get to Europe many times, but we have failed," said Joseph Zewdu, a 21-year-old Ethiopian refugee. "I was at sea for eight days. Eight people drowned. Then Libyan people arrested us and took us to prison."

For years, Muammar Gaddafi had allowed his country to serve as a transit point for Africans heading to Europe. In 2004, Tripoli Airport still displayed a sign welcoming "African brothers" to Libya. But thousands who flew there found their way to Europe blocked, and migrants from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan and elsewhere have populated entire neighborhoods in Tripoli, working menial jobs in the Libyan capital while hoping to reach Europe. A typical Mediterranean crossing involves a smuggler's fee of between $2,000 and $3,000, which migrants spend years scraping together by washing windows, baking bread and cleaning streets around the capital.

When the war erupted in February, even that precarious life collapsed for many migrants. Libyan landlords evicted many African tenants, and most embassies closed, leaving them with no way home, according to Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, the Italian cleric who runs the Tripoli church. "Usually they can find some kind of work and somewhere to live," he told me in mid-March, looking over the Italianate church, whose pews were filled with Africans. "But now they have nothing." This week, I found myself wondering how many of the people I had seen in those church pews or sleeping under makeshift tents outside Tripoli Airport had been among the 62 people who drifted to their deaths last month.

See Italy's troubling immigration deal with Muammar Gaddafi.

See "Fleeing Libya: Hundreds of Children Caught in Italy's Migrant Crisis."

 

__________________________

 

Libyan migrants' boat deaths

to be investigated by

Council of Europe

 

Human rights body demands inquiry into failure of European military units to save 61 migrants on boat fleeing Libya

Migrants in Lampedusa
Migrants who successfully made the boat trip to the tiny island of Lampedusa, Italy from the unrest in north Africa receive assistance. Photograph: Francesco Malavolta/AP

Europe's paramount human rights body, the Council of Europe, has called for an inquiry into the deaths of 61 migrants in the Mediterranean, claiming an apparent failure of military units to rescue them marked a "dark day" for the continent.

Mevlüt Çavusoglu, president of the council's parliamentary assembly, demanded an "immediate and comprehensive inquiry" into the fate of the migrants' boat which ran into trouble in late March en route to the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Yesterday, the Guardian reported that the boat encountered a number of European military units including a helicopter and an aircraft carrier after losing fuel and drifting, but no rescue attempt was made and most of the 72 people on board eventually died of thirst and hunger.

"If this grave accusation is true – that, despite the alarm being raised, and despite the fact that this boat, fleeing Libya, had been located by armed forces operating in the Mediterranean, no attempt was made to rescue the 72 passengers aboard, then it is a dark day for Europe as a whole," Çavusoglu declared. "I call for an immediate and comprehensive inquiry into the circumstances of the deaths of the 61 people who perished, including babies, children and women who – one by one – died of starvation and thirst while Europe looked on," he added.

Çavusoglu's intervention came as news emerged of another migrant boat which sank last Friday, according to the UN's refugee agency. Up to 600 were on board the overcrowded vessel as it fled the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

Witnesses who left on another boat shortly afterwards reported seeing remnants of the ship and the bodies of passengers in the sea. The International Organisation for Migration, which has staff on Lampedusa, said it had spoken to a Somali woman who lost her four-month-old baby in the tragedy, and said that it was unclear how many passengers had managed to swim to safety.

According to testimony collected by UNHCR workers in Lampedusa, migrants on the second boat setting sail from Tripoli attempted to disembark when they saw the first boat sink, but were prevented from doing so by armed men.

The UNHCR has insisted that more communication is needed between coastguards, military and commercial ships to minimise migrant deaths at sea.

"We need to take heed of a situation that is very much evolving. We have to cooperate much more closely," said a spokesperson, Laura Boldrini, adding that ships should not wait for a problem to arise before attempting to help migrant boats. "Rescue should be automatic, without waiting for the boat to break apart or the engine to stop running," she said.

Following the Guardian report into the plight of the migrant boat left to drift in the Mediterranean after suffering mechanical problems, Natorejected suggestions that any of its units were involved in apparently ignoring the vessel. Officials pointed out that the Charles De Gaulle, a French aircraft carrier identified as having possibly encountered the boat, was not under direct Nato command at the time – although it was involved in the Nato-led operations in Libya.

"Nato vessels are fully aware of their responsibilities with regard to international maritime law regarding safety of life at sea," said a spokesman.

French defence officials denied that any of their ships were involved. "The [Charles De Gaulle] was never less than 200km (160 miles) from the Libyan coast," read a statement. "It is therefore not possible that it could have crossed the path of this drifting vessel which came from the Misrata region. If this was the case, it would have obviously come to the rescue of these people, in some way or another."

In 2010, the statement added, French naval vessels intercepted around 40 refugee boats and came to the assistance of more than 800 people.

Campaigners believe that calls for European ships to be more active in assisting migrants are now becoming more urgent. "All of these migrant boats are incredibly overcrowded and these are desperate people," said Professor Niels Frenzen, a refugee law specialist at the University of Southern California. "Given the hundreds of deaths we know about – and many more we probably aren't aware of – any migrant boat that's being observed right now is by definition a vessel that is in distress, and one which needs rescue."

Frenzen added that with Nato, the EU border agency Frontex, national coastguards and other unilateral forces all operating simultaneously in the Mediterranean, there was an "incredible mess of overlapping missions and jurisdictional confusion over the boundaries of different search and rescue regions".

"We've got this incredible concentration of ships and aircraft in that sea, many of which are there under security council resolution 1973 [which authorises military operations in Libya], the primary purpose of which is to protect civilian life," he said.

The UN refugee agency issued a warning for all vessels to keep an eye out for unseaworthy migrant boats in the Mediterranean.

>via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/09/refugees-libya

 

 

 

 

 

VIDEO: Watch Episode 1 Of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s New BBC Crime Series “The Shadow Line” > Shadow and Act

Watch Episode 1 Of

Chiwetel Ejiofor’s

New BBC Crime Series

“The Shadow Line”

Well, look what we have here… I figured it’d be just a matter of time before someone uploaded this… and, sure enough, here it is - episode 1 of that new Chiwetel Ejiofor BBC crime series, The Shadow Line , which made its TV debut on BBC 2, in the UK, last week Thursday!

The series is not available for audiences outside the UK - not even on the BBC’s website - but you can thank YouTube user “m4r71jn” for taking the time to get the first episode online for the rest of the world to watch.

I’ve written about this new series a few times already, so I won’t rehash. Click HERE to catch up. Reviews of episode 1, as I posted last Friday, weren’t stellar. But you can find out for yourself by watching the episode, embedded below, divided into 6 parts, before it disappears:

Part 1 of 6:

Part 2 of 6:

 

Part 3 of 6:

 

Part 4 of 6:

 

Part 5 of 6:

 

Part 6 of 6:

 

 

VIDEO: Mother's Day: Chocolate Genius | "My Mom" >NewBlackMan + AUDIO: Marsha Ambrosius

Chocolate Genius

Mother's Day:

Chocolate Genius | "My Mom"

 

I last saw my mom conscious on Mother's Day 2009 in a Maryland nursing home; "My Mom" by Chocolate Genius (Marc Anthony Thompson) captures many of the emotions I felt that day.--MAN

 

 

__________________________

 

Marsha Ambrosius celebrates

“Mother’s Day 2011″

with a song | New Music

May 8, 2011 by Marsha Gosho Oakes   

Whilst we already celebrated Mother’s Day in the UK on April 3rd, many of our readers around the world observe the annual tradition today and in dedication, R&B songstress Marsha Ambrosius drops a harmonious free [if you catch it in time] gift for the ears with a lyrical tribute over soft piano chords; 

You keep me safe, you’re my best friend, you have instilled all that’s within…

 

Marsha Ambrosius – “Mother’s Day 2011″:

<span>Mother's Day 2011 by MsAmbrosius</span>

“Dedicated to my best friend “Cookie” – my Mother. To all Mother’s on this beautiful Mother’s Day 2011″
Marsha Ambrosius

Marsha’s debut solo album Late Nights & Early Mornings is out now. Read our review; purchase here.

www.marshaambrosiusmusic.com

 

>via: http://www.soulculture.co.uk/blogs/marsha-ambrosius-celebrates-mothers-day-20...

 

 

PUB: Call for Short Stories from Asia/ Africa: "Outcasts" Anthology > WEALTH OF IDEAS

Call for Short Stories from Asia/ Africa: "Outcasts" Anthology

Call for Short Stories from Asia/ Africa: "Outcasts" Anthology

Deadlines: 30 May 2011 (commitment), 1 August 2011 (final)

Writers from Africa and Asia are asked to submit short stories for an anthology of the two continents. The writers can be on the respective continents or in the Diaspora but it is necessary that their stories deal with the topic as experienced by Africans/Asians.

Topic - Outcasts (contemporary or historical, adult audience)

Length - 3000-5000 words

Submissions Deadline - August 1st 2011

Remuneration- Shall be discussed upon selection of your short story as part of the anthology. You will know by September 30th.

Editors - Writers Rohini Chowdhury and Zukiswa Wanner

The editors will need some written commitment from writers on whether they will be submitting something by May 30th. We kindly request no poetry or non-fiction. Purely short stories. Please submit a short two-line introduction about yourself with your story. If this exciting project interests you as a writer, kindly get in touch with rohini.chowdhury@gmail.com / wanner.zukiswa@gmail.com.