2010 Travel Writing Contest
Submit Your Travel Article
to the 52 Perfect Days 3rd Annual Travel Writing Contest for a chance to Win a Trip to Hawaii!Enter Now! Submission Deadline is October 31, 2010
2010 Hot Topic to Write About: National Parks. "Inside every National Park are spectacular treasures that should be explored by everyone."
The Three Things You Need to do to enter the 52 Perfect Days Travel Writing Contest are:1. Send us up to 1,000 words on your perfect experience at a National Park, National Monument, National Seashore or Historic Parks in the United State or Canada.
2. Submissions should share in detail how to spend a perfect day, evening, weekend or week focusing on one of the following; National Park, National Monument, National Historic Place, National Seashore or Historic Parks in the United State or Canada. Please provide a well-crafted, proofed and spell checked submission that offers a thought out experience. Make sure your story is unique, engaging and will excite our readers to also want to have this experience. Click here to check out the full submission guidelines.3. E-mail your article and photographs for a chance to win a trip to Oahu, a hotel stay in Palm Springs, a Wordpress website by ZD Design, a Tim Bihn Aeronaut bag or one of our many other prizes.
Need some article ideas? Check with your local Visitors Bureau or the U.S. National Park Service or Parks Canada.Visit a U.S. National Seashore like Cape Cod, Cape Lookout, Fire Island or Point Reyes. How about visiting a National Monument like the Agate Fossil Beds, Devils Tower, Muir Woods or Dinosaur National Monument.
Focus on one of the many great lodges located in the hundreds of National Parks like The Ahwahnee in Yosemite National Park, Big Meadows Lodge in Shenandoah National Park, North Face Lodge in Denali National Park Crater Lake Lodge in Oregon or Jenny Lake Lodge in Yellowstone National Park to name just a few! The posibilites are practically endless!
The best four entries, as chosen by our editors, will each win one of our prizes, and will be published in full on 52perfectdays.com, along with numerous runners-up. Click here for full entry guidelines and rules.
Prizes for the Winners!
1st Place Winner- 4 Day Trip to Oahu for Two
4 night stay at the Outrigger Reef on the Beach plus tours, activities, meals, shopping and more! (airfare not included)
Retail Value: Priceless!
2nd Place Winner- 2 Nights in Palm Springs for Two
2 night stay at the Ace Hotel Palm Springs and $120 towards spa treatments.Retail Value: $538
3rd Place Winner- Wordpress Website from ZD Design
Retail Value: $800
4th Place Winner- Tom Bihn Aeronaut Travel Bag
The Aeronaut is a maximum carry-on sized travel bag made by TOM BIHN in their Seattle, Washington factory. Retail Value: $200
10 Additional Entry Runner Up will win a copy of Best Travel Writing "True Stories from Around the World"
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Time for Africans to Explore Africa
By Kate Nkansa
A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a Senegalese friend about tourism in Africa. He made some interesting statements that I found to be insightful. He said that Africans were more likely to know more about France, The United States, United Kingdom and a host of other western countries, than they were to know about, Mali, Ghana, Tanzania, Angola or Senegal. Furthermore, Africans were more likely to visit western countries than countries on the African continent.
I often listen to Africans speaking and boasting about how many European countries they have been to, they however fail to mention one African country they have visited. Have you ever heard of anyone mentioning that they have been saving for a trip to visit Timbuktu in Mali, which was a centre of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th century; or Ghana which has some of the finest untouched beaches in the world; how about The Great Zimbabwean Ruins which is a world heritage site? Many of the places to visit in Africa do not cost you an arm and a leg to tour. It is possible to visit African countries on a small budget and get the most out of the holiday. Here is a list of places to visit in Africa(go to the links). Westeners know more about our beautiful continent than Africans. Whether it is North, Southern, East and West Africa. There are some great places to visit in Africa, something to suit peoples unique preferences.
Africa has many wonderful countries to visit where we can enjoy the rich history, cuisine and culture. It is time we take advantage of what this continent has to offer in travel and tourism. Let Africans support travel and tourism within Africa. Many of the places we wish to visit in the outside world are just at our doorstep.
We travel to France to get a taste of French bread and wine; Italy to experience their pasta and pizza; and Switzerland for their cheese and chocolate. What cuisine are African countries celebrated for having? Do we as Africans know? Here are a few African dishes I came across that I am certain would tickle anybody’s taste buds. Ghana is famous for its shitor, which is a spicy hot chilli pepper condiment that tastes like ketchup in the United States and salsa in Mexico. Shitor is served with any meal. It is delicious! West African Cuisine and East African Cuisine are delicious. Why not try cooking a new dish from these regions? Kenyan and Ethiopian coffees are some of the best in the world. I am sure there are plenty of other dishes and cuisines I have failed to mention.
Let us be more adventurous, in learning about different African music, cultural history, cuisines and tourist spots. It is a shame that we let our beautiful continent go unexplored by Africans.
Kate Nkansa is a risk-taker.She constantly challenges herself to step out of her comfort zone.She is a social entrepreneur,which is defined as a person who is ambitious and persistent, who tackles major social issues and offers new ideas for wide-scale change.Her goal is to become part of a growing voice among Africa's youth demanding change on the continent. She was born in Ghana but spent her youth in South Africa. She's currently living in South Korea, but will soon be back on African soil. www.africansolutionz.com
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Kate Nkansa's Statement:
I've alway been passionate about the continent I was born in. I'm Ghanaian by birth spent my childhood in South Africa and I'm currently living in South Korea. I recently started a forum called African Solutionz (www.africansolutionz.com). I was inspired to start this forum because of what I've witnessed as the lack of expectations and respect for Africa and Africans from the rest of the world. I figured that instead of trying to change mindsets of those who have a negative perception of Africa, it would be better to start becoming part of the change Africa so desperately needs.
The purpose of the forum is to bring young African professional from the Diaspora and those living on the continent a medium where they can exchange ideas,solutions,innovative inventions, projects etc.
African Solutionz by Africans for Africa!I also write for a weekly publication called Feint and Margin (one of my articles:http://www.feintandmargin.com/time-for-africans-to-explore-africa/)
Blog Http://www.africansolutionz.com
Ancient African Writing Systems
I wonder if I am the only one that gets seriously disturbed when I see claims that ancient Africans (excluding the Egyptians of course) were not using any writing systems before Arabs came into the continent bringing Arabic script. I believe such an assumption taken as fact is not only erroneous but is also one in several attempts to paint Africans as “lesser” in that everyone else in the world had writing systems except ancient Africans.
The truth of the matter is that ancient Africans were writing and there are several African writing systems even though most of them may be forgotten now. I have been following with keen interest Naijablog’s posts on the Nsibidi script yet the Nsibidi is not the only script that I’ve come across, there is also Tifinagh or Shifinagh, the written form of Tamasheq which is the language spoken by the Tuareg a nomadic people scattered through West and North Africa. Tamasheq is a southern Berber language and apparently bears significant resemblance to Pharaonic Egyptian. The roots of the Tamasheq writing system can be traced directly to the ancient Berber script that was used by the Numidians in pre-Roman times.
And we cannot forget the Ethiopian script, Ge’ez used in community that speak Amharic, Tigrinya and other Semitic and Cushitic languages. The Mande and Manding speaking people also invented their own writing systems.I recall reading about the Opa Orayan, an ancient obelisk that still stands in Ile-Ife. Though I have never seen the staff, I’ve read that the staff is inscribed with what seems to be hieroglyphics. The author of the book I read was trying to establish an ancient Yoruba-Egyptian connection but it is entirely possible that back in the day Yoruba used writing systems.
Writing systems rise and fall while the hieroglyphs may be the most famous, there was also the Meroitic script developed around 300 B.C.E but overtaken by the Coptic alphabet with the coming of Christianity in Nubia in the 6th century A.D. Tellingly, no one has yet translated Meroitic script and it is referred to as a ‘little understood sub-Saharan language’.
I wonder why in the presence of all this, I grew up believing that Africans did not have any indigenous writing systems and still even today, it is generally accepted that Africans never invented any writing systems.
While it can only be guessed why these systems of writing eventually died off, I believe it can be generally accepted that despite any sort of popular belief ancient Africans were writing and communicating through symbols and different types of script. I believe that it is necessary for us to realise that some ancient Africans actually used one form of script or the other and not be surprised that some people thought it was a good idea to transcribe something and communicate within themselves.
I always remain devoted to deconstructing erroneous conceptions of African history. We live in a world that has placed more importance on certain histories at the expense of others so there’s always work to do!
via blacklooks.org
We are all responsible for Omar Khadr
A Review of the documentary You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo
“Knowing has everything to do with growing. But the knowing of dominant minorities absolutely must not prohibit, most not asphyxiate, must not castrate the growing of the immense dominated majorities.” Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers.
A teenager with light brown skin, short hair and clad in orange coveralls sits slumped at a desk, head held in delicately cupped hands, and sobs. As he cries for his mother in Arabic the grainy image flickers and jerks with a lo-fi intensity that befits surveillance footage. He is alone in the room, having been left by his CSIS and CIA interrogators, fuliginous nameless wraiths who are off camera watching the same footage themselves, waiting for an opportune time to return to the tiny room to continue the psychological warfare they have been conducting on this twice shot, blinded from shrapnel, tortured and imprisoned adolescent.
And we—the audience—are watching with them, sitting tense in our seats, experiencing the intimate proximity of an interior space of intense injustice, pain, suffering, and desperation.
The teenager is Omar Khadr, a prisoner of the US government, who has been incarcerated for nearly seven years in Guantanamo Bay – where the surveillance footage was captured. The video of his four-day interrogation was recently released (some of it censored by authorities) and has been deftly deployed by filmmakers Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez in a new documentary You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo.
The minimalist film relies exclusively on the surveillance footage and interviews with Khadr’s lawyers, former co-inmates, family and experts. Inventively shaped into the documentary form, these interior scenes—difficult to watch, infuriating, heart-wrenching sequences of oppression and abuse—epitomize a dynamic documentary cinema powerfully delivers: that of virtual proximity.
Image from the Face Book Group, Justice for Omar Khadr
Documentary cinema is a powerful tool for drawing out empathy and understanding when it creates these spaces of interiority – intensely personal spaces that defy laws of physicality, where distance shrinks between subjectivities and audiences feel so close, so connected to the scenes before them the exchange elicits discomfort and tension. It is a virtual proximity that is championed by the non-fiction film genre; a screen closeness that lends itself to deep, emotional, and critical elucidation.
Following the Khadr example, one can learn about this terrible black mark on international law and on Canadian conscience by reading articles and watching news segments. One can even access some of the above mentioned surveillance footage on line. But these resources—disparate and disjointed fragments of “objective” interpretations of social reality—are ephemeral and incomplete stations along a journey of discovery and inquiry, they do not provide the holistic, attentive and ultimately intimate space that a documentary film deliver.
As such, it is documentary that shakes us from our media-sampling meanderings, sits us down, and teaches us how to come closer to others not near to us – how to diminish distance and share experience virtually with those we are likely never to come into material contact with, from the marginalized to the oppressed, the monsters and the casualties. It is this shared space documentary produces, this element of collapsing distant realities in time and space, that sets the grounds for diverse and dynamic spaces of discovery and inquiry, and hopefully inspired action.
And I certainly hope You Don’t Like the Truth (the title is taken from a comment an exasperated Khadr made to interrogators), will do just that for every single Canadian alive. This is wishful thinking of course, and a seemingly bizarre sentiment considering it is born out of engagement with a film that offers no hope at all for the victim of one of Canada’s most violent and discriminatory policies ever deployed. Omar Khadr is a sad burnt offering of Canada’s “War on Terror,” having been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong colour skin. There is no evidence against him that, even the American soldiers interviewed in the film agree, prove that he is guilty of killing a US soldier. In fact there is evidence that proves the opposite. Besides, as lawyers in the film argue, he was fifteen when he supposedly (I would say fictitiously) threw the deadly grenade – which makes him a “child soldier” under UN conventions and international law, meaning he should be released from Guantanamo immediately.
But freedom is a fairytale for this terrorized Canadian citizen. Instead, his lawyer, Dennis Edney, told us in Montreal after the screening at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema, he has two choices: Plead guilty and spend the rest of his life in prison, hopefully in Canada, or fight for his innocence and continue wasting away in the sinister shadows of Guantanamo and other US torture chambers. He is moving toward the former with little hope for a future of walking among the free.
As Omar Khadr fades from the collective conscience, from our media-memory fragments, this new documentary confronts us and urges us to share his space, to feel his suffering, and to be inspired to fight for him.“Each one of us is powerful. We can’t sit around and wait for government to do the right thing. We have to do it ourselves.” Edney told us this in an impromptu speech later in the evening that was will emerge as the most memorable and moving speech of the festival. Yet, it was a speech also mired by defeat: “I’m going to fly to Guantanamo tomorrow to see Omar and I’ll tell him about tonight and all of you, but I’m afraid I’ve got nothing hopeful to offer you.” The defeat is certainly not Edney’s, who has spent thousands of his own money and countless volunteer hours to represent Khadr over the years, but is instead shared by every Canadian.
We are all responsible for Omar Khadr’s freedom and rights. We are also all responsible for the abuses he has suffered during incarceration, including those against his rights. As he fades from the collective conscience, from our media-memory fragments, this new documentary confronts us and urges us to share his space, to feel his suffering, and to be inspired to fight for him.
The intense anger that many felt leaving the theatre must be translated into action. We must not forget about Khadr and other victims of Canada’s racist and costly War on Terror. We must fight for what is right, and what is right concerning Omar Khadr will never feel so clear as it does after experiencing You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo.
The time of waiting for government, especially the Harper administration, is over. It is time to force the elite minority of decision-makers and policy-shapers to do the right thing. There are only a handful of Khadr’s compared to the multitudes who enjoy the privileges of freedom in this country, it is enough to turn empathy into actions. It is enough to turn knowing about injustice and oppression into growing as active citizens who share the space of the dominated and who fight to break free of that space.
To take action, visit the Amnesty International Campaign page for Omar Khadr or the Omar Khadr Project, including the petition to repatriate Omar Khadr.
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Omar Khadr’s Canadian Lawyer: ‘The Americans Have Made Up The New Rules In The Laws Of War’
Yesterday, 24-year-old Canadian citizen Omar Khadrpleaded guilty to terrorism related charges during his military tribunal hearing at Guantanamo Bay. Khadr admitted to throwing a grenade on an Afghanistan battlefield that killed an American soldier in 2002 and planting numerous roadside bombs. Khadr had been reluctant to admit guilt, but his Canadian lawyer, speaking wit the CBC’s As It Happens last night,explained the situation Khadr faced:
DENNIS EDNY: He’s agreed to accept this deal because when he looks at the alternatives and the alternatives are that he’s in a military process…that has been condemned by military prosecutors themselves who say that it is designed to make findings of guilt. He faced the potential of life in prison under this system here because the jury is hand picked, the judge is hand picked, the prosecution is hand picked and the military defense is hand picked. And then what I think really capped it all off was, much of the evidence against Omar are statements that he made while being abused and tortured and under duress. So the cards were stacked.
Indeed, Khadr was both mentally and physically abused at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, where he was first interrogated, and at Gitmo. Those statements he made under duress were deemed admissible in court. Moreover, the New York Times notes that Khadr’s prosecution was “unusual” not only because child soldiers are normally not prosecuted (Khadr was 15 years old when the U.S. military apprehended him), but also because the main charge against him was killing a soldier on the battlefield, an action, again, that is not traditionally prosecuted. Thus, the U.S. military took great pains (see the “Jurisdiction” section of Khadr’s Stipulation of Fact) to make the case that Khadr lacked military immunity. One reason the military cited was the fact that Khadr wore no national military uniform. The Times reports the Obama administration’s shocking reaction to this conundrum:
The uniform issue also led to a scramble by the Obama legal team to rewrite commission rules on the eve of a hearing for Mr. Khadr. Because Central Intelligence Agency drone operators also kill while not wearing uniforms, the team rewrote the rules to downgrade “murder in violation of the laws of war” to a domestic law offense from a war crime to avoid seeming to implicitly concede that the C.I.A. is committing war crimes.
During his CBC interview, Edny further explained the bizarre circumstances surrounding Khadr’s plea:
EDNY: In court today, they added two more charges that we’d never heard of and it seems to be that he is responsible for everybody that got injured or killed in that fight in the compound with the Taliban. [...] These charges that Omar faces are unknown under the laws of war. The Americans made them up in order to justify detaining people who didn’t wear a uniform in the battlefields of Afghanistan and I’ve often said over the years, can someone tell me what uniform the Northern Alliance was wearing when it joined the Americans in attacking the Taliban? So it’s all smoke and mirrors here.
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Omar Khadr's Canadian lawyer talks to CBC's As It Happens
_________________________________
Under the terms of the agreement, Khadr will serve one more year in detention in Guantanamo Bay and then be repatriated to Canada to serve the remaining seven years.
A number of legal scholars questioned the legitimacy of Khadr’s proceedings. “The conviction of this child soldier for non-existent war crimes is a disgraceful travesty and a stain on America’s reputation,” said former Gitmo defense lawyer David Frakt, who added that the plea “saved the administration from the unseemly spectacle of a trial” and that the U.S. will “still go down in history as the first civilised nation to prosecute a child soldier as a war criminal.” Stanford Law lecturer Chip Pitts said, “This plea bargain shouldn’t be taken as indication of the legitimacy of the irredeemably tainted military commissions.”
“I don’t know how anyone who cares about the integrity and moral standing of the United States can absorb the full details of this case and not be profoundly ashamed,” writes the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan. “To prosecute a child soldier, already nearly killed in battle, tortured and abused in custody, and to imprison him for this length of time and even now, convict him of charges for which there is next to no proof but his own coerced confessions…well, words fail.”
via artthreat.net
President Dwight Eisenhower
Cultures of Resistance: A Look at Global Militarization
<p>Cultures of Resistance: A Look at Global Militarization from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.</p>
via vimeo.com
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Eisenhower's Farewell Address (edited version)
Eisenhower's Farewell Address (full speech - part 1)
Eisenhower's Farewell Address (full speech - part 2)
New Figures Detail Depth Of Unemployment Misery, Lower Earnings For All But Super Wealthy (VIDEO)
One out of every 34 Americans who earned wages in 2008 earned absolutely nothing -- not one cent -- in 2009.
The stunning figure was released earlier this month by the Social Security Administration, but apparently went unreported until it appeared today on Tax.com in a column by Pulitzer Prize-winning tax reporter David Cay Johnston.
It's not just every 34th earner whose financial situation has been upended by the financial crisis. Average wages, median wages, and total wages have all declined -- except at the very top, where they leaped dramatically, increasing five-fold.
Johnston writes that while the number of Americans earning more than $50 million fell from 131 in 2008 to 74 in 2009, those that remained at the top increased their income from an average of $91.2 million in 2008 to almost $519 million.
The wealth is astounding, says Johnston. "That's nearly $10 million in weekly pay!... These 74 people made as much as the 19 million lowest-paid people in America, who constitute one in every eight workers."
Johston sees the depressing figures as a result of government tax policies maintained by politicians with an eye on re-election, not good government:
It is the latest, and in this case quite dramatic, evidence that our economic policies in Washington are undermining the nation as a whole.We have created a tax system that changes continually as politicians manipulate it to extract campaign donations. We have enabled ''free trade'' that is nothing of the sort, but rather tax-subsidized mechanisms that encourage American manufacturers to close their domestic factories, fire workers, and then use cheap labor in China for products they send right back to the United States. This has created enormous downward pressure on wages, and not just for factory workers.
Combined with government policies that have reduced the share of private-sector workers in unions by more than two-thirds -- while our competitors in Canada, Europe, and Japan continue to have highly unionized workforces -- the net effect has been disastrous for the vast majority of American workers. And of course, less money earned from labor translates into less money to finance the United States of America.Johnston's assertions appear to be supported by a recent Senate vote.
In September, Senate Republicans along with a handful of Democrats, partnered to defeat the Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act, a bill that would have raised taxes on companies that send jobs abroad and benefited companies that bring jobs back to American soil.
The notion that it's good business for American corporations to send jobs overseas has been championed by U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's biggest and most powerful business lobby.
The tabulations, staggering as they may be, are only half of the picture.
Behind the official 9.6 percent unemployment rate (which is probably somewhere closer to 22 percent), are the stories of millions of individuals who are struggling to get by or are coming to terms with a future of lower wages and a life with less.
"60 Minutes" profiled the underemployed and unemployed on Sunday in a piece titled "The 99ers."
Among the most troubling stories are those of a financial analyst who has been unemployed for two years and is now living in a stranger's attic and a former office manager who now collects bottles and cans to get by.
Dizzy Gillespie
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Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks Gillespie was born on October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina and was the youngest of nine children. Dizzy taught himself piano and trombone at an early age and was inspired to switch to the trumpet at age twelve upon hearing his greatest early influence, Roy Eldridge. Gillespie received a scholarship to attend the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina but dropped out in 1935 to begin to work professionally in Jazz. In 1937 Dizzy joined Teddy Hill’s band and took over as first trumpet for Roy Eldridge. After a few years with Hill’s band and a tour of Europe, Gillespie joined Cab Calloway in 1939. Calloway never cared for Dizzy’s humor or playing and during a performance Calloway was hit by a spit ball by a band member and wrongly accused Dizzy and ended his stint with the band.
Dizzy played for several bands over the next few years including those of Ella Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Charlie Barnett and Duke Ellington. He also arranged tunes for big bands of the time including Benny Carter’s, Jimmy Dorsey’s and Woody Herman’s. Herman thought so much of Gillespie’s arranging, he suggested Dizzy arrange fulltime and put down the trumpet. But Dizzy kept on playing and during this time was creating bebop late at night at the jam sessions at Milton’s Playhouse. In 1945 Dizzy teamed up with Charlie Parker and the two made legendary recordings of the tunes “Hot House”, “Salt Peanuts”, and “Groovin High” among others. Dizzy and Bird played together promoting bebop, most notably on the west coast, but audiences were not yet ready for the new music. Gillespie then formed his successful big band which included members Milt Jackson, John Lewis, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke, James Moody, J.J. Johnson, Yusef Lateef and even Jon Coltrane for a time. Due to the economic issues of running a big band, along with big band bebop not being as popular as swing, by 1950 Dizzy had to break up his orchestra.
In the late 1940s Dizzy also discovered Afro-Cuban music, and helped spread the music in this country. It was a meeting with Chano Pozo that began the love of this music for Dizzy and much later in life, Dizzy met Arturo Sandoval in Cuba and the two became close friends and colleagues. 1956, the State Department commissioned Gillespie to form and lead a band that play internationally for several years. In the 1960s, Gillespie led several small groups that included Junior Mance, Leo Wright, James Moody and Kenny Barron among others. In the 1970s Dizzy toured the world with The Giants of Jazz and led the United Nations Big Band in the 1980s.
Throughout Dizzy’s career he made many appearances in movies and television including Sesame Street, The Muppet Show and The Cosby Show. He published his autobiography, “To Be or Not to Bop”, in 1979. In 1960 he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. He won a Grammy in 1976 for Best Jazz Performance and in 1990 the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1989 Dizzy played 300 performances in 27 countries, going strong until his passing in 1993.
“I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we're here is to be a part of this process of exchange.” – Dizzy Gillespie
“It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.” – Dizzy Gillespie
Rhoda Scott live on the Hammond C3 B3 jazz organ with one speed 22H Leslie + drummer Cees Kranenburg jr. From the full TV show 1972 and 1974 45-45min.
She have great homepage: www.rhodascott.com
Hit The Road Jack
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First Posted: 10-25-10 12:22 PM | Updated: 10-25-10 09:29 PM