The Right to Culture?

I spent this past weekend at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio, CA. Having scrimped and saved to buy the $260 tickets, plus additional money for gas and food, I still could just barely afford to go. A total of 180,000 people were able to attend at least one day, and many flew from all over the world to attend. And most had to dole out cash for accommodations as well, pushing the cost at well over $1000 for some.

With the reunions of Rage Against the Machine and the Jesus and Mary Chain, guest appearances by Scarlett Johannson, Perry Farrell, and Ron Jeremy, and non-stop incredible music and atmosphere from noon until midnight for three days, the cost is a nearly a non-issue for those who can afford it.

But most people can't afford it.

Last winter break I was in Israel and went to the "Festival B'Shekel," at which tickets cost just one shekel (the equivalent of about 25 cents) and thus anyone who wanted to go could. Food was moderately priced and art vendors and charitable organizations were heavily represented in the booths surrounding the festival. Some of the top Israeli performers played, which is pretty exciting if you're into Israeli hip-hop. The feel was similar to Coachella in that everyone was there to appreciate music and art, but the feeling of exploitation I've come to associate with theme parks, concerts, and especially Disneyland was noticeably absent. Many people sported the festival's t-shirt (which was only $5, by the way, compared to the $20 tees at Coachella) which read, "Festival B'Shekel" on the front and "everyone has a right to culture" on the back.

I thought about the Festival B'Shekel while I was dishing out $6 for a slice of pizza at Coachella. While Coachella hides under the veneer of a genuine love for music, art, and even politics, underneath it all is plain capitalism and those that can't afford it are denied the experience. Naturally, I understand that if Coachella were free, it wouldn't be able to happen, as these things need money to be held. What is ironic, however, is the incredibly liberal rhetoric used by many of the artists when it came to politics, but not when it came to economics. Zack de la Rocha, the lead singer for Rage Against the Machine, called for Bush to be "hung, tried, and shot" and tens of thousands cheered. Another performer, Peaches, got her audience to chant "Impeach Bush!" during her set. Additionally, the whole concert grounds has a strong environmental focus, with incentives offered for recycling water bottles and several energy-conscious exhibits which showed spectators how one can create energy by bicycling, among other things.

Naturally, environmentalism and liberal politics do not necessarily imply anti-capitalistic ideas should follow, but I think it's interesting to note that the cost of Coachella excludes a huge number of people that have the right to culture as much as anyone else. This idea of a "right to culture" has encourage many art museums to offer one night a week free admission or theaters to have "pay what you can" performances. Are free music festivals to follow?

China and the 2008 Olympics

Games 'catalyst for China abuses'
Two people observe the Olympic logo made from balloons in Beijing
China vowed to improve human rights in its bid for the Games
China is using the 2008 Olympic Games as a catalyst for suppressing dissent in the name of stability, Amnesty International has said.

A report by the group welcomed some reforms, but criticised China's detentions without trial and tightened control of the media and the internet.

Amnesty said China had failed to keep its promise to improve human rights in the lead up to the Games.

Chinese authorities have not yet commented on the report.

read on...

UN Calls for Peace in Somalia

Aid held up as car bombs, street battles plunge Somalia into crisis

MOGADISHU, Somalia: Somalia's government is holding up vital aid to tens of thousands of people as car bombs and street fighting Tuesday brought the death toll to nearly 1,500 in less than a month, sending this country lurching toward catastrophe, diplomats and witnesses warned.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon earlier called on warring sides to end the violence and allow humanitarian assistance to reach the needy. The Somali government and its Ethiopian allies are trying to quash a growing Islamic insurgency but civilians are getting caught in the crossfire.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/24/africa/AF-GEN-Somalia.php

The politics of saying "genocide"

More than 90 years after the Armenian genocide, the U.S. is deadlocked in a humiliating linguistic debate.
By Matt Welch, MATT WELCH is The Times' assistant editorial pages editor.
April 22, 2007


ON TUESDAY, President Bush will be obliged, by law, to wrap his double-talking mouth around one of the most curiously persistent debates in modern geopolitics: Whether to call a 92-year-old genocide a "genocide."

Every April 24 since 1994, the U.S. president has delivered a proclamation honoring the people Congress has declared to be "the victims of genocide, especially the 1 1/2 million people of Armenian ancestry who were the victims of the genocide perpetrated in Turkey between 1915 and 1923." And every year since 1994, the U.S. president has managed to do it without once uttering the G-word. It's a ritual of linguistic realpolitik in deference to the massive objections from Washington's important NATO ally, Turkey.

But 2007 may be the year that the cop-out finally blows up in a president's face. What was once the obscure obsession of marginalized immigrants from a powerless little Caucasus country has blossomed in recent years into a force that has grown increasingly difficult to ignore. In 2000, the Armenian issue helped fuel one of the most expensive House races in U.S. history; two years ago, it turned a mild-mannered career U.S. diplomat into an unlikely truth-telling martyr. Now the question of how to address these long-ago events is having an impact on next month's elections in Turkey.

read on...

Child killer to get hearing at European Court of Human Rights

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2451887,00.html

Persection of Buddhist Minority in Bangladesh

Foreigners warned to not leave dorms

From the Los Angeles Times:

Foreigners warned not to leave dorms

A leading Moscow university ordered foreign students to stay in their dormitories for three days because of fears of ethnic violence before and after Adolf Hitler's birthday today. Hundreds of foreigners at Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy were told to stock up on food and warned they would not be let out of the dormitories through Saturday. At least 22 people have been killed and more than 130 injured in apparent hate crimes in Russia this year, said the SOVA center, which monitors xenophobia. Last year, 53 people were slain and 460 injured, it said. In the past on Hitler's birthday, skinheads have targeted dark-skinned foreigners and others who appear non-Slavic.

Yahoo! sued for human rights violations

The internet company Yahoo is being brought to court in San Francisco by the wife of a Chinese dissident who has been sentenced to ten years imprisonment in China for "incitement to subvert state power."

The man, Wang Xiazoning, was arrested in 2002 in his home in Beijing by Chinese police. He had been anonymously writing and emailing to a listserve criticism of the government before his arrest. His wife, Yu Ling, claims that Yahoo Inc. revealed his name to Chinese authorities, which then led to his arrest.

Upon arrest, Xiazoning was tortured by Chinese authorities. Ling got hold of legal documentation which shows Yahoos involvement in identifying her husband. She has sought the aid of The World Organization for Human Rights USA to hold Yahoo! accountable for its role in the fate of her husband.

Here's the story on NPR.

This case is very interesting both legally and morally. To what extent should the blame be placed on Yahoo? Can we really buy that they were unaware of the reasons the government sought Wang's identity? Should privacy be guaranteed 100% when it comes to internet publishing, or does a government have the right to this kind of information? What about our own government?

This reminded me also of a story about Google's questionable morals when it comes to Google China. Apparently they believe in freedom of speech unless they're dealing with a suppressive country. Should there be seperate moral codes for these companies when dealing with the US verses China?

Bush warns Sudan during visit to Holocaust Museum in Washington

But he still fails to implement sanctions...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9678523

Chiapas benefit in 1 week

12th Bi-Annual 5-Cs Chiapas Support Committee

Benefit Dinner

Join us for some great Mexican food, entertainment and information
session on the Chiapas' social movement that has been expanding in
Chiapas, Mexico for the last 20 years.

Chiapas Support Committee Mission Statement: The Chiapas Support
Committee was founded in 1995 to educate the surrounding community about
the human rights situation in Chiapas, Mexico, where descendants of the
Mayan Indians were asking for solutions to their situation of poverty,
the need for self government, and human rights. Our mission is still
true today. The Chiapas Support Committee annually sends delegations of
students to Chiapas to participate as human rights observers. In
conjunction with Fray Bartolome de las Casas, a human rights center in
San Cristobal de las Casas (city in Chiapas, Mexico), students travel to
indigenous communities in Chiapas, gaining hands-on experience in human
rights work. These students will experience the effects of power
relations, environmental degradation, and how Chiapas associates to the
international community. This group is not alone in its efforts; it is
part of a greater international effort to ensure that all are empowered
with the ability to act out against human rights violations. It is the
obligation of these participants to bring back their experiences from
their trips to educate and inform the greater college community of the
Claremont Colleges.

Date: Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Time: 5:30pm - 7:30pm

Location: Gold Student Center, Pitzer College

Tickets: Will be sold at all dining halls:

Students - $5

Staff - $7

Faculty - $10

For more information email Yvonne Olivares at yvonne_olivares@pitzer.edu
or email Randy Gomez at
rgomez@pitzer.edu

Fight Inequity in Education

Teach For America is now hiring for Campus Campaign Manager Positions!

We're looking for highly motivated leaders who are interested in helping
to combat educational inequity in America's schools. Your position
would entail running a marketing and recruitment campaign here at CMC to
ensure that the largest and most diverse group of students apply to join
Teach For America next year. I've included the job description below.

Teach For America's recruitment program is one of the most highly
respected across all industries - check out this article that originally
ran in Fortune Magazine: here.


No matter what you're thinking about doing long term working with this
organization is both an exceptional chance to champion an important
issue of social justice and a great resume building opportunity.

For more information please contact:

Brittany Lovejoy

Campus Campaign Manager

Teach For America

(510) 396-2154

blovejoy07@cmc.edu

or:

Sarah Todd

San Diego Recruitment Associate

Teach For America

(212) 270-2080

sarah.todd@teachforamerica.org

In case you missed it last week...

Movie screenings of "Invisible Children" & "Left Behind"

Wednesday, April 18 at 8:30 pm in Bauer Center rm. 1 (Bauer basement,
side facing tennis courts)

hosted by SMRC for African Awareness Week

Human Rights Activist Maria Julia Hernandez passes on

WHEN forensic teams from Argentina dug in 1992 into the earth at El Mozote, in the mountains of eastern El Salvador, they first came upon a reddish rubble, mixed up with the roots of thorn-plants and weeds. A little deeper they uncovered small, thin skulls, some of them blackened by fire. Underneath these were bundles of what seemed to be brown rags: the blood-soaked cotton dresses, trousers and socks of what had once been children, killed more than a decade before. The pockets of some still held their lucky plastic toys.

The forensic work at this, the most dreadful killing-field of modern Latin America, was memorably reported by Mark Danner in the New Yorker. But it might never have been carried out, and the massacre of 794 people, overwhelmingly civilians, in December 1981 might never have been forced to the world's attention, if María Julia Hernández had not been on the case. She was in charge of the Socorro Jurídico, later the Tutela Legal, which during El Salvador's murderous civil war of 1980-92 kept track of human-rights abuses for the archdiocese of San Salvador. She was therefore the person to whom Rufina Amaya Márquez first told her story.

article continued...

Slaking a Thirst for Justice

A generation later, in both Argentina and Chile, the courts are dealing with the perpetrators of past atrocities.

Article in the Economist

Somali peace talks postponed again

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FD24AF0D-D8BF-4A92-A649-26B65F8BD72B.htm

Story of a Ugandan Victim

Ugandan Ochola John, was abducted from his village by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group in northern Uganda. The group has been accused of gross human rights violations, including massacres, abduction, mutilation, torture, rape, and the use of child soldiers. LRA leader Joseph Kony blatantly denies these and other atrocities.

Russian police beat, detain protesters

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070414/ap_on_re_eu/russia_protests

film screening at Scripps

'Pilgrimage' film screening!

~followed by discussion with director and reception~

WHEN: Sunday, April 15th
TIME: 7:00 PM
WHERE: Vita Nova Hall Lecture Rm. 100 (Scripps College)

Cosponsored by: AARC, SCORE, AAMP, Itihad

Description: PILGRIMAGE tells the inspiring story of how an abandoned
WWII internment camp has been transformed into a current-day symbol of
retrospection and solidarity in the aftermath of 9/11.

Check out the trailer: http://www.ulinkx.com/video/285235

BBC News reports on human rights abuses in China

Coping with history

China warns Japan to stand by its apologies
Premier Wen says he expects Tokyo to turn them 'into concrete actions.'
By Bruce Wallace, Times Staff WriterApril 12, 2007

Darfur editorial

GIVEN THE LAST half-decade of deceit and misery in the Darfur region of Sudan, and the international community's repeated broken promises to do something about it, it seems cruel to ask the 2.5 million refugees there to wait a few more weeks while the U.N. weighs its options. Yet that's exactly what Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked for — and the Bush administration is rightly inclined to give him the time....

Darfur's ticking clock

UN Reports on China's Pollution

Global warming and pollution are human rights issues.
Don't forget about the summit the Center will host next year about human rights in China (just in time for the Olympics!).

U.N. report raises pressure on China to cut pollution
Economic growth has brought environmental disaster, but fixing it is complicated by politics, poverty and tradition.

Not Just a Cup, But a Just Cup

A Ugandan coffee co-op brings together Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

http://www.mirembekawomera.com/coop

Challah for Hunger's French Toast Fest

French Toast Fest!

Challah French Toast is holding another amazing french toast fest!

When: Thursday, April 12, 9:30 PM until we run out

Where: Humanities Courtyard on Scripps

Invite your friends and come feast after WaBaCa. If you can't make WaBaCa, come anyway!

$3 per slice, $6 all you can eat--delicious toppings included (fresh berries, syrup, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, powdered sugar, and more)! CASH ONLY

All sales go to humanitarian relief in Darfur!!

fmi: claremont@challahforhunger.org or aklaus@scrippscollege.edu

What is Root Force?

Are you tired of talking about "the system" and ready to do something about it? Are you looking for a way to fight the onslaught of corporate globalization beyond summit hopping and buying fair trade? Root Force is a strategic campaign designed to exploit weak points in the global economy and hasten the system's collapse. Using direct action, Root Force pressures all those involved in specific infrastructure construction projects in Latin America to end their participation in ecocide and genocide.

Presentation will include...
* Segment from a new film on Plan Puebla Panama called "La Conquista Sigue" (The Conquest Continues), produced in Chiapas, Mexico.
* A puppet show on international solidarity
* Slides from communities of resistance in Mexico and El Salvador
* A talk on the Root Force campaign

FREE PATTY'S BURRITOS!!! Thursday, April 12th 6pm at the Grove House, Pitzer

fmi: spressma@scrippscollege.edu

Displaced Iraqis Ignored, says UNHRC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6470425.stm

See For Yourself

The Holocaust Memorial Museum joined with Google today to launch an unprecedented online mapping initiative using Google Earth technology. Photographs, eyewitness testimony and other information are combined with high-resolution satellite imagery to show the scope of destruction in Darfur in a new and immediate way. Check it out.

Jerry Fowler at the Ath

Darfur: So Far from Here

JERRY FOWLER

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007
LUNCH 11:45 a.m. -- LECTURE 12:15 p.m.

At the Athenaeum

Jerry Fowler, William F. Podlich Distinguished Visitor and Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights. He is on leave from his position as the founding staff director of the Committee on Conscience, which guides the genocide prevention efforts of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He previously was legislative counsel for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, where he worked on a broad array of human rights issues, including international justice and refugee and asylum policy.

Child Abuse Ubiquitous in India

A study released by the Indian government reveals that two out of three children in India are abused, mostly by teachers, parents, and other relatives. Child abuse is traditionally denied in India, and this study is the government's first effort to document the problem.

Hidden Sex Slavery in the U.K.

Each year, thousands of women, many of whom are teenagers, come to the U.K. from Eastern Europe, thinking they will be working as cleaners or au pairs, but are instead forced into prostitution. These women are often sold into slavery in airport coffee shops as soon as they arrive in the U.K.

Child Slaves in Haiti

In Haiti, a nation suffering from extreme poverty and social instability, an estimated 250,000 children live in conditions amounting to slavery. Many Haitians cannot provide for their children and feel they no choice but to sell them, or even give them away.

UK Schools Condone Holocaust Denial

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article1600686.ece

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=445979&in_page_id=1770

And a column on the subject:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04082007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/u_k__schools_sickening_silence_opedcolumnists_barry_rubin.htm

Have summer plans? Want to volunteer in Israel?

Amirim

Be Part of Israel and Help Shape its Future!

LIVE IN ISRAEL

Amirim is a unique program where college students and young professionals live in a close-knit community of apartments next to the beach and minutes away from Tel Aviv!

Participants get to choose from the following sessions:

*NEW 5 wk session: Bat-Yam apartments from June 4-July 5, 2007 ($800)

-6 wk session: Bat-Yam Apartments from June 11-July 19, 2007 ($950)

-4 wk session: Bat-Yam Apartments from June 11-July 5, 2007 ($650)

-4 wk session: Holon Apartments from June 24-July 19, 2007 ($650)

VOLUNTEER IN ISRAEL

Amirim gives students and young adults the opportunity to contribute to Israeli society by volunteering for a non-profit organization. Among the many rewarding volunteer placements available are:

• Windows-organization aimed to promote acquaintance, understanding, and conciliation between Jews and Palestineans
• Amnesty International-This international organization runs educational programs and action campaigns related to human rights
• Green Action-Awareness of environmental issues
• Hotline for Migrant Workers-civil rights of migrant workers and victims of human trafficking in Israel
• Israeli Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Association
• Children's Day Camps
• Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
• and MUCH, MUCH more!

PROGRAM OFFERS:

-Apartment in Tel Aviv suburb. Support staff is available on a full time basis.

-Volunteer placement of your choice

-Weekly Siyur(day tour)

-Tel Aviv cultural events

-Three Day Tiyul (Hike)

-City Bus Pass

-Third party and medical insurance

Amirim is the ideal program for birthright Israel alumni who have had a taste of Israel and are looking for ways to come back and contribute to the community. The program gives participants the opportunity to not only HELP Israeli society, but it also allows one to LIVE THE LIFE of an Israeli. This is accomplished through the daily interaction they have with Israeli citizens, living in Israeli apartments, picking up hebrew, and by overall experiencing the culture and social fabric of modern Israel.

For more information visit www.hamagshimim.org.

Mary Robinson lecture

EUROPEAN UNION CENTER OF CALIFORNIA presents: ************************************************************************ **
MARY ROBINSON First Woman President of Ireland Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative speaks on: Ethical Globalization and Human Rights ************************************************************************ ** Wednesday, April 18, 2007 7:30 p.m. Public Lecture Garrison Theater, Scripps College 231 E. 10th Street, Claremont ************************************************************************ ** Cosponsored by Clark Lecture Fund and the Malott Commons Office of Scripps College. The event is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information: 909.607.8103 ************************************************************************ ** MARY ROBINSON Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland and formerly the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has spent most of her life as a human rights advocate. She is the superb example of a woman politician who puts her humanity very much at the forefront of her politics. She now chairs the council of Women World Leaders and is a member of the Global Commission on International Migration. Recently, President Robinson was named a "Hero and Icon" as one of the Time Magazine's 2005 top 100 men and women whose "power, talent or moral example is transforming the world." As an academic, legislator and barrister, she has always sought to use law as an instrument for social change, arguing landmark cases before the European Court of Human Rights as well as the Irish courts and the European Court in Luxembourg. In 1988 Mary Robinson and her husband, Nicholas Robinson, founded the Irish Center for European Law at the University of Dublin, and since 1998 she has been Chancellor of the University. Based in New York, President Robinson is currently leading Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, supported by a partnership of the Aspen Institute, Columbia University (where she is a professor of practice) and the Swiss based International Council on Human Rights Policy. Its goal is to bring the norms and standards of human rights into the globalization process and to support capacity building in good governance in developing countries. A Council of Goodwill Ambassador, she also serves on the International Commission of Jurists and is Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. President Robinson was educated at the University of Dublin (Trinity College), King's Inns Dublin, and Harvard Law School to which she won a fellowship in 1967. She holds honorary doctorates from over 40 universities over the world, including Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, London and Edinburgh. ************************************************************************

Attack of the Killer Memoir

Wannabe writers shot down by a child soldier

'How I messed up my suburban middle-class life' doesn't hold a candle to the memoirs of a onetime child soldier.

by Meghan Daum (LA Times opinions page)

April 2, 2007
IT'S THE ASPIRING young middle-class writer's worst-case scenario. You get to college armed with pages of prose that capture the soul-sucking torpor of your suburban adolescence, only to find yourself in a writing class with a former child soldier who spent years fighting the Revolutionary United Front after his Sierra Leone village was torched and his entire family killed. And the guy can actually write!

As you sit there, wiping your eyes while the class discusses the astonishing detail with which he's described AK-47 rifles and blood-soaked babies, you have a sudden urge to run — not because the imagery is so intense but because your story is up for discussion next and it's about getting drunk at the senior prom and losing your purse.

I'm not saying this went on at Oberlin College where Ishmael Beah, now in his mid 20s, began to write about the experiences that would eventually make up the bestselling and much-ballyhooed "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier." But I've been in enough writing workshops, as a teacher and a student, to know what it feels like to have your literary thunder stolen by someone who actually has something to say. It seems like an especially unfair advantage at a small, private liberal arts college where, except for the lucky few who lost their virginity to their shrinks or who had Russian spies for parents, so many would-be writers are going to be pretty much stuck writing about summer camp.

But we live in a world full of not just summer camps but refugee camps and genocides and unimaginably violent civil wars. And now that Beah has turned out a coming-of-age memoir that makes even the most gothic childhood sob stories look like "The House at Pooh Corner," he may have closed the book on an entire literary genre.

I mean, what twentysomething self-respecting memoirist (if that's not an oxymoron) would want to get in the ring with a guy who not only survived the front lines in Sierra Leone but made it all the way to Oberlin — and majored not in English but political science? Even more vexing, Beah is attractive, well-spoken and does not appear to be adapting his book into a screenplay; he is serving on the Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Division Advisory Committee, which only makes many of his fellow memoirists look extra ridiculous.

Attention solipsistic young scribes: all the bad boyfriends, clueless parents and junior years abroad are no match for the child soldier. Better go back to whatever you were doing before you started writing about yourself. Just don't go to Starbucks, because Beah's book is being sold there, and you'll just feel worse.

I KNOW, I KNOW. There's room in the marketplace for all kinds of books and, as I have told students many times, you can write about something as banal as teeth flossing as long as you a) write it well and b) infuse the subject with some kind of universal relevance (flossing as a rite-of-passage metaphor, for instance).

But here's the catch. If you're going to write something compelling and salable about an inherently dull subject (for example, most people's lives up until about age 45), you'd better be not only gifted but possessed of some pretty serious literary craft. However, most almost-too-young-for-memories memoirists, gifted or not, just don't have the chops to turn their summer camp reminiscences into "This Boy's Life" for the new millennium.

That's why, over the last several years, probably the most successful category for memoirists of any age could be called "I Crossed Over to the Dark Side" lit.

Among the younger set, the typical Dark Side trajectory goes like this: author has unresolved childhood issues (distant father, overbearing SAT-prep instructor), author makes a bad decision (enters bad marriage, tries heroin, drops out of Brown to become a prostitute) and then seeks salvation through a creative-writing workshop that results in a juicy, maybe even Oprah-worthy memoir.

But now that Beah has raised the bar to oxygen-depriving heights, I suspect we won't be seeing as many of these titles. After all, the literary world is just a higher-stakes version of a college writing workshop.

You can be the most talented student in class, but if you're unlucky enough to have grown up in a stable home, you need to work that much harder to find a story worth telling.

In other words, you need to write fiction. And if there's anything that can mess up a life more than trying heroin, it's trying to write a novel. *

daum@latimescolumnists.com

How to Approach the Eradication of Female Genital Cutting (FGC)

There is a great article written by Gerry Mackie on the cultural context that surrounds FGC, comparing the practice to footbinding in China. The article explores the cultural importance of FGC and shows that the traditional aspects of the practice must be understood and considered when developing policies aimed at the eradication of this practice.

Here is the link: http://www.tostan.org/news-fgc.htm
The article is called "Chapter 13: Female Genital Cutting: The Beginning of the End"
If that link doesn't work, go to www.tostan.org, the articles section, and it is the fourth hyperlink on the page.

Lastly, the organization, TOSTAN, is a very interesting organization. It was created in Senegal by an American woman, Molly Melching, as an informal education program for women in rural areas. They are now expanding their efforts to many other African nations. It is a two-year program that is facilitated in the villages that it is serving, and is focused on sustainable development. The facilitator provides support for any projects that the villagers decide they would like to pursue. The program aims to empower its participants and teach through song and theater, as a means of incorporating the local culture.

Author and Human Rights Activist Adam Michnik Visits April 4

Historian, writer, and lecturer Adam Michnik, author of Letters From Prison and Other Essays and current editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland, will visit the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Wednesday, April 4 to discuss “Democracy and Religion.” The public portion of the program begins at 6:45 pm; seating is free, on a first-come basis.

A lifelong activist for human rights, Michnik was detained many times between 1965 and 1986, spending a total of six years in prison for his opposition to the communist regime. An adviser to the Solidarity trade union during the 1980s, he was a negotiator for the Solidarity team during the Round Table negotiations of 1989 between representatives of the government, Solidarity, and other groups that brought an end to communist rule in Poland.

He is the author of countless essays, articles, and books, including Letters from Prison and Other Essays (1985), Letters from Freedom: Post-Cold War Realities and Perspectives (1998), and The Church and the Left (1993). In these he discusses Polish intellectual tradition, history, politics, and current affairs. Historians and scholars have commented that his writings, like the Federalist papers or the articles and letters of Gandhi, are not only reflections on action, but a form of action themselves.

In addition to receiving numerous awards for his eloquently articulated advocacy of democracy and freedom of the press, Michnik is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and Der Spiegel. He is also a visiting fellow at Loyola Marymount University in Santa Monica as well as Princeton University.

In 2005 Michnik spoke at a number of events and met with classes on campus as a Podlich Distinguished Fellow. These included his featured remarks on the late Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz––honored during the Milosz International Festival: The Exile in California, a four-day event held on the CMC campus in 1998—and the recent passing of Pope John Paul II. He also was a keynote speaker for the Athenaeum conference The Changing Face of Europe: European Institutions in the 21st Century, organized by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies.

While in residence at CMC, he also worked on two articles: one on terrorism and the French Revolution, and one on Milosz and the contemporary meaning of The Captive Mind.
Michnik’s April 2007 visit to CMC is sponsored by The Family of Benjamin Z. Gould Center for Humanistic Studies.

Invisible Children screening

SCREENING OF INVISIBLE CHILDREN
THIS THURSDAY 6:00 PM IN AVERY AUDITORIUM
DISCOVER THE UNSEEN

Can a story change the world? In the spring of 2003, three young Americas traveled to Africa in search of such a story. What they found was a tragedy that disgusted and inspired them- a story where children are the weapons and the victims. From suburban living rooms to Capitol Hills, with coverage on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, the National Geographic Channel, and more- this film is infectious, and has inspired many to act. This wonderfully reckless documentary is fast-paced, with an MTV beat, that is truly unique. To see Africa through young eyes is humorous and heartbreaking, quick and informative- all in the same breath. See this film, you will be changed forever.

For more information about invisible children visit www.invisiblechildrencom