Speaking out contradiction

"We are all seeds" message from Vandana Shiva

I had the pleasure of talking quickly with Vandana Shiva during an event I worked, I admire this woman and thank her for all the work she has been doing.

"As 2015 has been declared the Year of Soil, let us recognize that in the seed and the soil we can find answers to every one of the crisis we are facing"

 One of Vandana Shiva's books.

Marilyn Monroe forever 2

Marilyn Monroe... forever

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Nigerian novelist speaks about the danger of a "single story"

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2009, Oxford, UK. Duration: 18:49)

"That's how we create a single story: Show a people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again and that's what they become."
Chimamanda Ngozi

I watched the video and found a woman who is not only a great thinker but also a fighter without losing sense of humor.
But be prepared to get angry if you're emphatetic cause biased stories about nations is not easy to stand.

"Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born on 15 September 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria, the fifth of six children to Igbo parents, Grace Ifeoma and James Nwoye Adichie. While the family's ancestral hometown is Abba in Anambra State, Chimamanda grew up in Nsukka, in the house formerly occupied by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. Chimamanda's father, who is now retired, worked at the University of Nigeria, located in Nsukka. He was Nigeria's first professor of statistics, and later became Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Her mother was the first female registrar at the same institution.

Chimamanda completed her secondary education at the University's school, receiving several academic prizes. She went on to study medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the University's Catholic medical students.

At the age of nineteen, Chimamanda left for the United States. She gained a scholarship to study communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia for two years, and she went on to pursue a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University. While in Connecticut, she stayed with her sister Ijeoma, who runs a medical practice close to the university."

(read more about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie here)

Billie Holiday: Homage to Lady Day

This music is in Billie's last album "Lady in Satin".
Some people said at the time it was released, 1958, that her voice was not the same and other criticisms.
I love her voice this way.
As someone stated: "This is the voice of someone with a life."
The Audio Story shows Billie rehearsing and singing alone in the last two minutes,





I'm not blogging lately because things are a little hectic.

The Gulabi Gang: Indian women fighting abusive men

"The Gulabi Gang is an extraordinary women’s movement formed in 2006 by Sampat Pal Devi in the Banda District of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India. This region is one of the poorest districts in the country and is marked by a deeply patriarchal culture, rigid caste divisions, female illiteracy, domestic violence, child labour, child marraiges and dowry demands. The women’s group is popularly known as Gulabi or ‘Pink’ Gang because the members wear bright pink saris and wield bamboo sticks. Sampat says, “We are not a gang in the usual sense of the term, we are a gang for justice.”

The Gulabi Gang was initially intended to punish oppressive husbands, fathers and brothers, and combat domestic violence and desertion. The members of the gang would accost male offenders and prevail upon them to see reason. The more serious offenders were publicly shamed when they refused to listen or relent. Sometimes the women resorted to their lathis, if the men resorted to use of force.

Today, the Gulabi Gang has tens of thousands of women members, several male supporters and many successful interventions to their credit. Whether it is ensuring proper public distibution of food-grains to people below the poverty line, or disbursement of pension to elderly widows who have no birth certificate to prove their age, or preventing abuse of women and children, the Pink sisterhood is in the forefront, bringing about system changes by adopting the simplest of methods - direct action and confrontation.
Although the group’s interventions are mostly on behalf of women, they are increasingly called upon by men to challenge not only male authority over women, but all human rights abuses inflicted on the weak."

Gwen Stefani style: I bought jeans like hers?

I was going to publish a post about Gwen Stefani's style and the No Doubts items she sells at her site.
Now I was searching and found this post and... surprise, surprise: I bought a pair of black jeans that looks  like the one on the left.
Funny. I was a little afraid that the jeans was a little too much.
Now I can say: it is Gwen Stefani's jeans, OK? Any problem with that?lol
As always I removed all the labels. I'll do a label with "Hella Heaven" written on it and now I'm thinking about doing another with "Hella Good" or "No Doubt".

I love Gwen Stefani and her music is great! I can't buy any of No Doubt's items because I don't have a credit card.but I would buy:
 and a
.
T-Shirt.
I'll try to make a picture of my jeans. Shy... shy... shy.. Blushing, blushing, blushing...

Brunette Marilyn Monroe

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi's speech "No Justice, No Peace"

Dahlia Wasfi is an Iraqi-American physician and peace activist. Born inn 1971 in New York to a Jewish-American mother and Muslim Iraqi father, Dr. Wasfi spent part of her early childhood living in Iraq.
Visit her site here.

"We have an obligation to every last victim of this illegal aggression because all of this carnage has been done in our name. Since World War II, 90% of the casualties of war are unarmed civilians. 1/3 of them children. Our victims have done nothing to us. From Palestine to Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia to wherever our next target may be, their murders are not collateral damage, they are the nature of modern warfare. They don't hate us because of our freedoms. They hate us because every day we are funding and committing crimes against humanity. The so-called "war on terror" is a cover for our military aggression to gain control of the resources of western Asia.

This is sending the poor of this country to kill the poor of those Muslim countries. This is trading blood for oil. This is genocide, and to most of the world, we are the terrorists. In these times, remaining silent on our responsibility to the world and its future is criminal. And in light of our complicity in the supreme crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ongoing violations of the U.N. Charter in International Law, how dare any American criticize the actions of legitimate resistance to illegal occupation.

Our so-called enemies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, our other colonies around the world, and our inner cities here at home, are struggling against the oppressive hand of empire, demanding respect for their humanity. They are labeled insurgents or terrorists for resisting rape and pillage by the white establishment, but they are our brothers and sisters in the struggle for justice. The civilians at the other end of our weapons don't have a choice, but American soldiers have choices, and while there may have been some doubt 5 years ago, today we know the truth. Our soldiers don't sacrifice for duty-honor-country, they sacrifice for Kellogg Brown & Root.

They don't fight for America, they fight for their lives and their buddies beside them, because we put them in a war zone. They're not defending our freedoms, they're laying the foundation for 14 permanent military bases to defend the freedoms of Exxon Mobil and British Petroleum.

They're not establishing democracy, they're establishing the basis for an economic occupation to continue after the military occupation has ended. Iraqi society today, thanks to American "help" is defined by house raids, death squads, check-points, detentions, curfews, blood in the streets, and constant violence. We must dare to speak out in support of the Iraqi people, who resist and endure the horrific existence we brought upon them through our bloodthirsty imperial crusade. We must dare to speak out in support of those American war-resisters, the real military heroes, who uphold their oath to defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, including those terrorist cells in Washington DC more commonly known as the Legislative, Executive & Judicial branches.

"If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress"

Frederick Douglass said

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughinging the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both ... but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

Every one of us, every one of us must keep demanding, keep fighting, keep thundering, keep plowing, keep speaking, keep struggling until justice is served. NO justice, NO peace."

Real video of Dr. Dahlia Wasfi speech on 2012.
There is a version that uses the speech showing shocking images but as the person, or organization who used the speech and edited the images didn't sign I don't consider it a reliable source.
If we are fighting unethical people we have to be very careful and not jump into the same mud.

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

The Bumny Lady

The Bumny Lady is only seen in days of blue moon. She often changes to another city making it impossible to know where will be her next appearance be.
A man once claimed he had talked to her but he disappeared before telling what they talked.
She was never seen in a rural town.

Six years without Anna Politkovskaya

                                                                                   © Photo Anna Politkovskaya's family archive
The first post of this blog is a quotation by Anna Politkovskaya.
Whenever I search for pictures of Anna it amazes me by the many expressions and how her always changing  hair helps showing different attributes of this great woman.

The first time I saw Anna Politkovskaya I knew nothing about her. It was a documentary about the Moscow theater siege and she speaks for one or two minutes.
Instantly I knew this woman was special and was deeply concerned with human beings.
I don't wanna talk about those who killed her and I don't even need to know who pulled the trigger.
We know why she was murdered: they hate those who are connected with ethics, integrity, fighting for human rights, truth and it is the same way not only in Russia: it's like this all over the world.

I want to remember Anna as a journalist, activist, thinker a woman of multiple gifts.
She is so above those who killed her that I rather not refer to them in a post about her. I already did.
Next time I'll say nothing but praise and show the work of Anna Politkovskaya.
Let's celebrate her.

Anna Politkovskaya                                30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006

Ellen Degeneres, me and Nancy: "Me and Now" at Beacon Theater

No. I'm not coming out, I like men, but she is a role-model for me. I would love to make people laugh and when I was a child I did a lot of things to myself that I would love to see now cause they were funny, at least for me.
I still do these perfomances for myself. I do faces at the mirror that are so strange and I have a lot of fun and also talk to myself inventing situations and stuffs.
I have a lot of fun doing these scenes.

Anyway... I'm not Ellen and whenever I see her I laugh and when it finishes I usually try to do some of the things she did. I don't dare to watch at myself at the mirror but I have a lot of fun doing it.

I wanted to share this with you, took some one-minute-shots and choose this one although the others are also great.

I can't be at the computer due to back problems I can read or watch TV. I choose to watch TV because I find good stuffs.
Maybe I have a gift because usually people say: "Turn off your TV or you'll become stupid or will be brainwashed and you'll this or that. TV is evil."
Strangely enough I found this show and also two good movies.
One of them is Sean Penn at "Fair Game" telling the Valerie Plame's story. Sean's character even exhorts  people to see the truth and take their responsability on what happens in US politics. Numerous critics... go here for instance.

But I don't know what is happening to these actors nowadays. They accept to do movies without researching and in the end it's always disappointing. The true story was not well reported as you can find in many sites.
What is going on Sean Penn? What about the other actors and actresses that are doing war propaganda?

Keep your TV on but be critical and search!
The other movie...I'll talk about it at another time cause I have to get out of the computer.

You can watch more Ellen at Youtube or buy the video, wait till they broadcast at the TV again.

shot these to choose one (click to enlarge)

Nancy? Where is Nancy? Watch the video. Now I'm gonna rehearse tripping at my living room...
Ok... This is the entire story in a very good video.

Movies' visual quotation: "Shall we Dance"

"The rumba is the vertical expression of a horizontal wish. You have to hold her like the skin on the thigh is your reason for living. Let her go, like your heart's being ripped from your chest. Throw her back, like you're going to have your way with her, right here on the dance floor. And then finish like she's ruined you for life."

I recorded it, terribly  39 seconds home-made, because of the quotation but also because at this movie each character is so important that claiming that any of the actors is the leading and the others are supporting is not true for me. Susan Sarandon, one of my favorites actress, is recognized at this movie because of what Beverly says in a scene about marriage being witnessing each other's lives but this is not another one of her greatest performances.

Lisa Ann Walter's Bobbie is an amazing woman and next to Jennifer's Paulina they make a great contrast of two expressions of femininity.

Each character is important and we know the story of all of them which is one of the most important aspects of this movie for me. However for some people it is impossible to detach themselves from the leading character and the rest. This is the movie of Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Lopez for many.
This is a movie about all of them.
Another criteria would involve searching who earned more money .

It's a nice movie to watch on a Sunday and as it's being transmitted at HBO for a long time I believe that many people have watched it. It's great when a movie can touch so many people around the world uniting us all.

Susan Lindauer's books, speeches and work: arrested under Patriot Act

Susan Lindauer is a journalist, antiwar activist, author, former CIA Asset and 9/11 Whistle blower who believes the Senate Intelligence Committee should investigate the abuse of Assets– like herself– engaged in terrorism investigations, including the embezzlement of $13 million from the 9/11 investigation.
In 2005 she was arrested and charged with "acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government".

At this video she speaks about many issues. Go straight to 07:00 minutes when Susan starts to talk. If you don't know about her, please, search her name and you'll find many links to her work : Minute 41:15:

"I was locked up in prison on a military base for a year. I was held under indictment for five years. The government was so threatened by what I was going to say that ... they wanted to forcibly drug me with Haldol, Ativan, and Prozac, which would have chemically lobotomized me. They could not identify anything wrong with me except that I argued that ... I had worked in antiterrorism for nine years and I warned about 9/11. They actually petitioned the court on the Patriot Act for the right to detain me up to 10 years in prison with no trial and no hearing. They wanted to lock me up and forcibly drug me at the same time."

 Most people spend too much time listening to those who are in power when the attention must be focused on those who are fighting them.

Erin Brockovich: the bad employee

"I was working in the compressor.
The supervisor calls me up to the office and says:
"We'll give you a shredder...
...and send you to the warehouse to shred the documents we stored."
He say why?
Nope. And I didn't ask.
Did you look at the stuff you destroyed?
It was a lot of dull vacation schedules and stuff.
Then there were memos about the holding ponds, the water in them.
And readings from the test wells, stuff like that.

"You were told to destroy those?

That's right.
Course, as it turns out...
...l wasn't a very good employee."

This is Charles Embry the employee that provided the incriminating documents that was used as proof that PG&E had previous knowledge that the water was contaminated.
The corporation payed $333 million settlement to the victims, the largest direct action lawsuit in U.S. history.
Let's not forget that the woman who gathered all the information was not a lawyer.

Erin Brokovich, the movie is based on a true story, keeps working and surely needs some bad employees because her cases are not welcome by corporations who pay a lot of money to put her work in discredit.

What do Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Love have in common?

Not only the name. They have a great body and both have a sweet way of looking.
Their bodies have curves a blasphemy for the fashion industry that forces women to have a rectangular shape
and reach the controversial size 0.
Jennifer Love turned down a Playboy offer and said:

“Like all women out there should, I love my body.” She added: “To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist, put on a bikini - put it on and stay strong.”

Jane Elliott: How does it feel to be treated like a "nigga" for a lifetime?

"When am I gonna quit? When racism quits. Do I have a job for a lifetime?
I'm afraid so."

Jane Elliott

Last month I published this post about Daryl Davis, the black musician man that persuaded twelve members of Ku Klux Klan to leave the organization. He wrote a book about it "Klan-destine relationships: a black man's odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan”.

I was amazed when I did read about Daryl achievement and the same happened when I watched at the TV Jane Elliott doing one of her workshops.
She exposes the weapons of racism by making people feel in their skin how discrimination, segregation, being stereotyped and mistreated have a terrible impact on the minds of the individuals who are part of a minority group and for this reason are mistreated in this case having a black skin.

I always asked myself why behavior experiments always aims evil. Stanford Prison and Stanley Milgram experiments were both done by psychologists trying to verify how people can be controlled or behave according to what they are told individually or in a group as a whole.
The ethical aspects of both experiments were questioned and the scientific methodology, especially in Stanford Prison, is questionable.

I never saw any of these psychologists doing experiments and, once again, I ask myself why they are done behind closed doors since they have to do with human beings emotions and behavior what is of interest of everybody.
It became an unquestionable fact that psychological experiments have to be done away from the public and one explanation is that it is necessary so that interferences from the outside don’t jeopardize the results. I’ll pretend it is true.

Jane Elliott’s workshops received some critics but what she does is not related to a scientific experiment and Jane payed a high price for her activism, fighting racism, and all her family was affected.
The workshops last two hours and I would love to be part of one of them especially to be at the blue side, the minority group.
Two groups are divided: blue eyes and brown eyes and this is the explanation that is at her site:

About
“Jane Elliott is an internationally renowned teacher, lecturer, and diversity trainer who presented this Seminar in the City Campus Union. She is famous for her classroom experiment, “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes.”

In response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. over thirty years ago, Jane Elliott devised the controversial and startling, "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise. This, now famous, exercise labels participants as inferior or superior based solely upon the color of their eyes and exposes them to the experience of being a minority. Everyone who is exposed to Jane Elliott's work, be it through a lecture, workshop, or video, is dramatically affected by it.”

I watched twice one of her workshops at the TV and it is true that people are highly affected because Jane is really good in creating the “prejudice arena” that some people are confined because... exactly. Why?

There are some good learning materials at Jane’s site. In a very simple and easy way she puts in evidence what is hidden in some of the phrases and statements we use. I truly believe that in same cases we only learn when we face the problem ourselves and Jane’s work is perfect to make us see how dis-empowering being part of a minority is.

Visit Jane’s site to meet a great woman and learn more on how the dungeons of prejudice work and understand what the blue eyes/brown eyes workshop purpose is.

This is the work of a lifetime.

"The Baby Songbook" by Tom Seidmann Freud

Thought about Sigmund Freud, yes, it is his niece. The name is Martha but changed to Tom due to some of her views and beliefs.

The illustrations above are from the child's book "The Baby Songbook" that has many beautiful images.

At her site there are information about her and copies of her great illustrations:

"As an adult, she was noted for her eccentricities as well as her artistic talent, in particular, her decisions to adopt a man's first name and to wear men's clothing. A long history of emotional instability preceded a major breakdown after the failure of her husband's publishing venture and his suicide in 1929; she took her own life the following year. Seidmann-Freud has been characterized as a member of the Jugendstil (German Art Nouveau) movement. Her artwork often featured people and objects simply but precisely rendered in ink, their outlines carefully filled in with watercolors using the pochoir (stencil and layering) technique.

It is sad that she took her life but the silence, the taboo that surrounds the topic suicide must be broken because it is part of human condition and every ten minutes someone commits suicide.

But today is Christmas... exactly. Christmas is not a happy occasion for many and suicide is high during this period of the year.

I'll be doing some posts about suicide in 2012. Don't worry. Death is part of life and before dying people do a lot of amazing things just like Martha, or, Tom Freud did.

Another woman that dressed like man is George Sand, the French novelist, born Aurore that changed to George when she became a writer. She had a relatioship with the composer Chopin and was friend of Frederic Liszt, Delacroix and other artists.

Merry Christmas, and if you are not happy I can assure you that the club has many members.

Séraphine, the cleaning lady that was a painter, movie by Martin Provost

I watched the movie Séraphine by Martin Provost and loved it. It is the story of Séraphine de Senlis a cleaning lady that painted.

What I liked the most about the movie is that the story unfolds without any drama and not emphasizing any aspect of Séraphine biography, it is a true story,  with the talent of Yolande Moreau interpreting Séraphine.

Maybe in the hands of another filmmaker her madness, she was locked at an asylum where she spent the rest of her days, her poverty or weirdness, she talked to trees, to angels and Virgin Marie would be depicted in a heavy way making the artist disappear as it was done with many artists.

This is the opposite and Séraphine's paintings are the most important and by watching the movie we get in touch with her style, her flowers that are quite unusual, almost unique and get in touch with the great collection of work she left.
This would be a great movie for Christmas since Séraphine had a catholic education and talked to Virgin Marie.

I'll not write too much because this movie should be seen by those who like art and for those who love nature or wants to reach the sublime, a rare occasion in today's filmography.

The movie, there are English captions, speaks for itself and focus on the woman, not the lunatic that painted. Maybe this is one of the reasons it was awarded.

Séraphine de Louis is currently exhibited in the Musée Maillol in Paris, the Musée d'art de Senlis, the Musée d'art naïf in Nice, and the Musée d'Art moderne Lille Métropole in Villeneuve-d'Ascq.

I just found this video where Martin Provost speak about the film and I'm glad that he says he didn't want to make Séraphine's biography. I'll translate what he says and publish another post about this movie and the artist. There is a biographic book but I don't want to know details of her life. It doesn't help me 
SEEING.