A 12-year-old boy committing suicide in Paktika province in Afghanistan last May in a crowded marketplace, killing four people in the process and wounding dozens, is just one the latest incidents of children’s participation in deadly acts of war. The act is in itself a severe indictment of adults using children for such actions, and the need to further control children’s participation in war, thus depriving them of a normal childhood.

That same month, Afghan security forces arrested three boys, all under 14, as they attempted to cross into Afghanistan from Pakistan to carry out suicide attacks. Using children as suicide bombers is a new and dangerous act by the insurgents in Afghanistan -aimed at both Afghan and American forces- where children are used as pawns in acts of war.

Many children may ‘voluntarily’ take part in warfare, probably not realizing the dangers involved in this participation. Most children, however, are forcibly recruited. They are driven to join in other cases by poverty and abuse, and in some cases to seek revenge for violence carried out against their families.

Using children as soldiers is probably as old as war itself, which doesn’t make it less regrettable. It was customary for youths in the Mediterranean basin to act as aides, charioteers and armor bearers to adult warriors, examples of which can be found in several writings and artistic features.

In more recent times, the Khmer Rouge exploited thousands of children to commit mass murders and other inhuman acts during the Cambodian genocide. During the conflict in Sierra Leone (1993-2002) thousands of children were recruited and used by all sides involved in hostilities. In Uganda, stating that he had “received a message from God” Joseph Kony organized the Lord’s Resistance Army in 1987 that forcibly recruited thousands of children and forced them to commit criminal acts.

Although it is difficult to assess the real numbers, it is estimated that some 300,000 children –both boys and girls under 18- are involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide. Africa has the largest number of child soldiers, who are used in armed conflicts in Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Sudan.

There is important legislation against children’s participation in war. In 2002, the Optional Protocol on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in conflict entered into force. The Protocol outlaws the participation of children under 18 in hostilities, raising the previous standard of age (15 years) set by the Convention and the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their 1977 Additional Protocols.

In addition, in July 2002, the Statute of the International Criminal Court entered into force, making a war crime the conscription, enlistment or use of children under 15 in hostilities by national armed forces or armed groups. Important as these laws are, however, violations of the laws of war regarding children need to be properly monitored and reported. This will allow that perpetrators can be held accountable before appropriate tribunals.

The US Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 prohibits governments using child soldiers from receiving US military financing, military training and several other ways of US military assistance. Last October, President Barack Obama issued national waivers to allow Chad, Congo, Sudan and Yemen to continue receiving military aid despite their use of child soldiers.

Issuing those waivers is to send those countries the wrong signal on an issue of critical humanitarian importance. As long as countries continue receiving military assistance, they will not feel any constraint in recruiting children. As Jo Becker, children’s rights advocate at Human Rights Watch stated, “Last year the administration gave these governments a pass. It shouldn’t do so again.”

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.

To the Editor (and potentially concerned others):

The column by customarily excellent activist Ray McGovern linking the American Civil Rights struggle to the addition of the "Audacity of Hope" ship to the flotilla to help break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, which is getting a lot of press these days, poses an insurmountable problem for me. I know the Civil Rights struggle well, through not only being involved in it but having written an award-winning book on it: The Healing of a Nation, which gained the same national award given a year earlier to Martin Luther King.

Out of an experience including my being a World War II veteran, while concerned with the plight of the Palestinians, in the case of Gaza my sympathy is overwhelmingly with the Israelis. Here way out of all proportion to its “sins” is this frightful new worldwide wave of antisemitism on the rise focused on Israel as the prime villain. Here is this tiny little enclave of democracy surrounded on all sides by Islamic extremists brought up from birth to hate it, not only proclaiming its destruction, but actually repeatedly having tried to demolish it in the past. And here we have Iran setting out to build the nuclear bombs---only one of which, as they herald, can wipe out Israel in a single burst! Plus repeated attacks by suicide bombers destroying Israeli mothers and children in schools and market places. Plus to top it off---in regard to the vaunted flotilla to bring justice to the Palistinians---an entity in Gaza not only controlled by Hamas, dedicated to destruction of Israel, but actively now, in day after day perpetual warfare, lobbing rockets across the border to blow up Israelis.

If you were an Israeli---knowing of the indifference of the world during the Holocaust---would you welcome the arrival of ships set in motion to end the Israel inspection of all ships headed for Gaza? Would you sit quietly and do nothing knowing that the Arab plan is for the ostensibly "good ships" to be followed by a stream of "bad ships" bearing more rockets, missiles, etc., regularly supplied by Iran, Hezbollah, with funding by Syria, wealthy Saudi Arabians, and misguided U.S. groups?

Or would you endorse the present mild, non-violent blockade that could mean life rather than death for yourself, your children, and your tiny embattled country?

Justice versus injustice? When will the thousands of well-intentioned progressives wake up to the fact they are being sucked and suckered into the new Islamic hate Israel ploy? When will they realize the "civil rights" cause for our time is to fight for the Israelis AND the Palestinians against the Arabian and other overlords who stay in power by fomenting rather than lessening hatred of the Jews.

David Loye is the author of widely respected books on the use of the brain and mind in prediction, political leadership, race relations, and is the developer of new theories of moral sensitivity and evolution.

This article is based on reporting from Haiti-based Haiti Grassroots Watch and AlterPresse.

HINCHE, Haiti, June 27 – Last week, thousands of farmers and supporters of Haitian peasant agriculture marched for hours under the hot Caribbean sun to call for more government support for locally grown seeds and agriculture.

The demonstration was organized by the Peasant Movement of Papay and other farmer associations, human rights and women’s groups, and the Haitian Platform for Alternative Development (PAPDA), the Haitian online agency AlterPresse reported from the march. The official theme of the peaceful demonstration was “Land Grabbing is Endangering Agricultural Sovereignty.”

• Chemically treated Monsanto/DeKalb corn seeds in Haiti. Photo courtesy of Haiti Grassroots Watch. •

[1] Email from Elizabeth Vancil to Emmanuel Prophete, Director of Seeds at the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, and others; released by the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, date unavailable.

Copyleft Beverly Bell. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. Please credit any text or original research you use to Beverly Bell, Other Worlds.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. You can access all of her past articles regarding post-earthquake Haiti at www.otherworldsarepossible.org/haiti.

I saw Gone the other night at the Elmwood Theater in Berkeley as part of the Frameline Film Festival. Talking about the documentary still upsets me days later as I keep thinking, "How can such injustice and homophobia exist in today's world?"

The film follows the plight of Kathy Gilleran, a retired police officer from upstate New York, to find out what happened to her son Aeryn, a U.N. employee living in Vienna. Aeryn essentially vanished and has not been heard from or found to this day. Filmmakers Gretchen and John Morning document how the case was mishandled by police who were unabashedly uninterested in an investigation, and Kathy's unending quest to uncover the truth about her son's death.

The film screens tonight in San Francisco at the Roxie Theater at 7 p.m. The filmmakers and Gilleran are expected to be in attendance.

It was one of these days where everything seemed to be going wrong. After a grueling winter we had enjoyed a brief spat of good weather until today, when it was extremely hot and humid and clothes hang immitigably to my body.

An unpleasant man who usually sits on the steps next to my building was more unpleasant than usual. He asks passersby for money and when they don’t give it to him he yells and curses at them. He is, by all regards, a bad addition to our otherwise wonderful neighborhood.

I had been feeling down for several weeks with some vague pain and other unusual symptoms. Earlier, I had gone for another visit to a doctor carrying the results of some tests. I was obviously concerned that I could have some very serious health condition.

I traveled uptown to see a doctor at a place with which I am not familiar. I took the wrong turn and was late for my appointment. While waiting to see the doctor I had difficulty breathing, something generally provoked by my allergy to pollen. The problem is usually resolved by taking my anti-allergy medication, which I usually carry with me; usually, that is, except for today.

After carefully reviewing the tests, and after a thorough physical examination, the doctor told me that I had a kidney problem, although not life-threatening. It is the kind of news I prefer to be spared of.

On my way home I witnessed a horrible traffic accident. A man on a bicycle was coming on a big avenue at full speed when he had a collision with a car that unwisely was crossing the avenue on a yellow/red light. As a Brazilian traffic code states, “When crossing on a yellow light do anything you want, but do it quickly.”

This is precisely what the driver at the car didn’t do, since he was crossing the light going at a very slow speed. I was a bit distracted but still I heard the tremendous noise of the thump of the cyclist against the car and saw him flying over it and falling on the street on the other side of the car. With some difficulty the cyclist got up, and started rubbing his legs and arms, which probably hurt a lot after the collision.

“What were you thinking, man, what were you thinking?” he repeatedly asked the car driver. “This is a $20,000 bike, man, this is a very expensive bike,” he said, not even complaining about how painful the collision had been for him. I felt very sorry for him, his bike destroyed and who knows what happened to his body.

I was wondering what else could go wrong. I started crossing the avenue when I saw coming from the opposite side a most beautiful young woman. She was tall, had very long legs, an attractive face with full lips and a small, perfectly shaped nose. She was dressed in white, a summer skirt loose on her body. She looked like a young Marylyn Monroe.

As she started to cross the avenue there was a sudden, strong wind coming in front of her. Her dress gave way and the skirt jumped all over her face. Her legs were indeed beautiful, and reminded me of the iconic Marylyn Monroe photograph when her skirt is lifted by a breeze coming from a vent placed underneath her.

Perhaps the only advantage of being an older man is that young women will never misinterpret a remark done in good will. As she was passing me by I told her, “You have a beautiful body.” As if reading my mind she answered with a smile, “But I am no Marylyn, you know….” Her quick and good humored riposte changed my mood for the rest of the day.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a New York writer.

A woman of substance like Kasi Lemmons is hard to miss because the fruits of her hard work precede her. I have been a devout fan of her work ever since I watched the movie, Eve's Bayou, which began with the words, "Memory is a selection of images. Some elusive, others printed indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father, I was ten years old. My brother Poe was nine, and my sister Cicely had just turned fourteen." Then the mesmerizing story eclectically told, unfolded like poetry in motion before my eyes.

While at the time more masculine oriented movies with edgier plots such as Boyz N Da Hood, New Jack City, and Clockers filled the African American movie landscape, her unique woman's touch delivered via her uniquely crafted movie added a welcome feminine perspective to the African American movie landscape and drew a larger Caucasian than African American audience.

I was impressed by the mind of the woman who conceived and birthed the unique story that was delivered in such a visually impressive and unique way by using dreamy imagery and a carefully chosen choice of words that only a person who invested a large amount of time and effort could create. To me, her work is truly inspirational.

When I finally met this gifted story teller who is also an actress, filmmaker, director, and screenwriter at Howard University Department of Communication where she had come to selflessly teach a free master class and receive the Paul Robeson Award named for the screen, radio and concert hall star who displayed dignity and unwavering courage in the face of racism as an academic, artist and human rights activist, I seized the opportunity to speak with her.

• Kasi Lemmons receiving her award. •

Before graduating she returned to NY, where she attended The New School of Social Research's Film Program. While there, she made her first movie, Fall From Grace, a documentary about homeless people. After that, she began her acting career appearing in several productions including The Cosby Show, Silence of the Lambs, Hard Target, Candyman, Drop Squad, Vampire's Kiss, Chop Squad, School Daze, Fear of a Black Hat and The Five Heart Beats.

When she became tired of acting the "regular female black roles," like the best friend, the girl next door or the cop, which paid the bills, but didn't provide artistic satisfaction, she took time out of her busy schedule, reflected and wrote the script of a story that had been brewing in her heart for years. Her actions which many would have considered career suicide, resulted in Eve's Bayou, the titillating story of the Batistes, a powerful middle class African American Southern family, set in the 1962 Louisiana Bayou, which is loosely based on her family's experiences.

This was her first feature length movie and her directorial debut. It was the highest grossing independent film of 1997. It won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature, and received 7 NAACP Image Award nominations including the Best Picture Award nomination. She received a special first time director award, created for her by the National Board of Review. She also won the Director's Achievement Award at the 9th Annual Nortel Palm Springs Film Festival.

Apart from fast tracking her career, Eve's Bayou reinforced the careers of established actors such as Lynn Whitfield, Debbie Morgan, Diahann Carroll, and actor/co-producer, Samuel Jackson, and also launched the careers of up and coming screen starlets like Meagan Good and Jurnee Smollett. The Los Angeles writer, Kevin Thomas said, "Eve's Bayou is inspired achievement appreciation of intricate aspects of life."

Her directorial follow-up to Eve's Bayou, a mystery drama titled, The Caveman's Valentine also starring Samuel Jackson based on the novel by George Dawes Green, which was a co-production with Danny Devito's Jersey Film, opened at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival to audience and critical acclaim and earned actress Tamara Tunie an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Kasi directed a touching tribute to renowned actor, Sidney Poiter that aired during the 2002 Academy Awards and was involved in an exploration of the roles and representations of black women in film for the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival. She also directed Talk To Me, a movie about DC ex-con turned radio "talk jock" personality and community activist, Petey Greene, which stared Don Cheadle and won the 2007 Best Esemble Gotham Award, while earning Chiwetel Ejiofor an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor and earning her the 2008 NAACP Image Award for outstanding directing.

Recognized as leader in her field, in 2009, she was one of four American scriptwriters chosen by the Writers Guild of America to attend a six week residence program in France organized by the Franco - American Cultural Fund and the Ill de France Film Commission. The completion of the fellowship was another addition to her long list of achievements.

• Kasi Lemmons & author, Susan Enu Majek, Editor- in-Chief of Sociable Susan Magazine. •

As an educator, she has taught at Yale University, Columbia Film School, MIT, UCLA, The Los Angeles Film School, and The University of Pristina Film School in Kosevo. She was Vassar College’s 2008 Artist in Residence and an adjunct professor at the USC Film School, where she taught Directors: Mise-En-Scene. In the 2010/2011 academic year, she is the UCLA Regents' Lecturer in the School of Theater, Film and Television. She is also the leader/moderator of AFI curriculum's core class, Narrative Workshop. She was awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from Salem State College in 1998.

Artistically, she is at the pinnacle of success. She has had and is still having a long and eventful career. In addition to that, contrary to popular belief of the impossibility of combining such a non-traditional career with a family, she has managed to do so. She is happily married to Vondie Curtis-Hall and they have two children.

After the award ceremony, I was opportuned to talk with this inspirational filmmaker. Below are excerpts...

Q & A

With a mother from Georgia, a father from Louisiana and spending summers with your grandmother in Alabama, you can't be more Southern, so what did Eve’s Bayou mean to you in terms of your heritage?

I can sit in a bar with you and tell you the story of Eve's Bayou. My southern roots influence me and it shows in it. It was fantasy, some reality and family folklore. For example, some of my relatives actually met the voodoo lady depicted in the movie at a fair in the South. It doesn't matter where they are, if your people are from the deep south, they take it with them where ever they go.

Why did you become a filmmaker?

I chose to ignore conventional wisdom of getting a 9-5 job. I made a decision to strive for greatness. It sounds like a lofty goal, but I thought, even if I miss, I'm still better off than not trying at all.

What is your advice to others who want to follow in your path?

It's not the goal that matters; it's the act of striving. Being uncompromising and doing your best work is what it's about. We must think, in this time in a divided country, how do we justify being artists and filmmakers? Art informs us about humanity, including our differences and similarities. With film, you can recognize the plight of people you have never even met. You can travel in time and to different places. It's tedious to make movies about the world we live in, so you must justify why you're an artist to yourself and the world, but be playful, be joyous, and never take no for answer. The world and your country need you to be courageous and confident.

How did you get your start in the industry?

I was about 9 years old when my mother signed me up for acting classes at the Boston's Children's Theater, which was not only a theater, it was more like an agency. While I was there, the theater was contacted by the TV show, You Got A Right, with their need for an African American girl. There were very few black girls in Boston at the time, let alone in the arts, so I was recommended for the opportunity and I got it. Then I starred in commercials for a while.

I was later cast in the play, Balm of Gilead written by playwright, Lanford Wilson, which was produced by the prestigious Steppenwolf Theater Company because they needed to replace a character and I was chosen for the part. The role was a different character than what I was used to playing. It was an aggressive, dikey, streetwise and tough character, but it was an opportunity to stretch myself artistically in a different direction. I played the role well and because the company had clout in the industry, I was taken seriously by others and received more opportunities.

What was your first film you acted in?

It was Spike Lee's School Daze.

How did you prepare yourself for what you do?

For acting, I was part of the Circle In The Square Youth Program, and I also studied at The Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in New York for 12 years. I read books and attended master classes. For script writing and directing, it's the same. I was also at The New School Film School.

Who are your mentors in and outside of the industry?

I never had what you'd traditionally call "mentors," but I have always had some brothers in my corner such as Warrington and Reggie Hudlin of the Black Filmmakers Foundation. Spike Lee also encouraged me. After seeing the first film I produced in film school, Fall From Grace, whenever he'd see me, he'd ask me about my current projects. After Eve's Bayou came out, he called to congratulate me. Bill Cosby also definitely helped me. Also, Samuel L. Jackson who signed on early, and acted as the principal actor and co-producer in Eve's Bayou, helped immensely in getting it made.

What advice do you have for people especially women of color aspiring to be like you?

I would advise them to be prepared to bring their "A" game. I'd tell them to work at the highest level of their ability. If they work hard and they are prepared, luck will come their way, because luck is the love child of preparedness and opportunity. Whatever they do, they should do it well, so if someone opens an opportunity for them, they are ready and prepared to take it. Also, I'd say they shouldn't give up because I find that many women of color are easily discouraged, sometimes even before they start.

How do you view rejection in the filmmaking business?

It's easy to say after some rejections, "This is too hard and quit. However, you have to be strong and get better at your craft. Keep the negative voices behind you. Ignore the noise and believe in yourself.

How was the Ill de France experience?

It was an incredible opportunity. They had high expectations, but it was an enriching experience. It included meetings with potential French partners, including producers, directors, and actors and visits to locations described in our scripts to build bridges between the French and American Film industries and to further develop my script, Strangers in Paris.

What is the movie about?

It's is a love story about a young African American woman in Paris who went to scatter ashes. She meets this infamous graphic artist who doesn't speak English and she doesn't speak French, but they fall in love. The film depicts love without verbal communication. The moral of the story is that love transcends language barriers.

Apart from movies, other kinds of creative works would you like to create?

I'd like to make a documentary on Nicaraguan experience.

What else are you interested in?

I'm interested in politics, human rights, investigations into past occurrences and stories of human struggle.

The image of the black family is often underrepresented and misrepresented in the mainstream media and in your own way you are correcting this, but why don't you produce more movies?

Filmmaking isn't easy or fast. The phrase "Cinema War" was coined because the movie making process is said to be similar to an actual war. Sometimes it's about give and sometimes it's about drawing a line in the sand. Also, movie making is about good scripts and writing good scripts takes time.

Do you maintain a crew to have consistency?

I can work with different Directors of Photography, but I use one editor and sound editor who are geniuses.

Movies educate and inform and filmmakers make the choice of making culturally sensitive productions or not. What advice do you have for filmmakers on the choices they make?

As an artist, I don't like the idea of people being bound to political correctness because it is stifling. I don't want people holding back on a story because it will depict people negatively. I'm interested in imperfect people. It's important to see and portray people often as neither necessarily good nor bad because people are complex. Human beings are flawed people who struggle within themselves and are somewhere in between good and bad. So more real and multi-dimensional, not stereotypical movies should be made, which goes back to the need for better writing. Writers must make their stories stronger and truer while sometimes making painful changes.

What do you think of diversity in the movie making business?

The key is that a variety of images and films should be made. The problem is the narrowness of stories being told and films being made where there's no richness of characters. Black stories don't have to be "hood experience” stories. We need a diverse field of writers, especially women of color to portray the real richness of the woven tapestries of life. It's hard to get films where African Americans are the subject matter made, unless it's a really funny comedy or a really edgy film. It's hard to get a black drama made because the systems in place don't support it.

How do you believe studios can tell more diverse array of stories via movies?

First we must realize that we can't force them to change and that this is a business with executives focused on the bottom line in terms of financially, marketability and award winning ability. They know good quality when they see it. However, they may also want to be more open to different voices and quality of filmmakers.

The Blind Side was perceived by different groups of people in different ways. Some felt it was the often told and glorified story of a Caucasian "hero" saving an African American remade. This may have been what made the story appealing to the studio executives thinking of box office receipts, the movie getting made, being promoted heavily, receiving high box office receipts and the numerous awards it did. What are your thoughts on it?

The Blind Side was directed by John Hancock who is a super producer. His clout in the industry not his race had to do with the resources made available to make the movie and ultimately the success of the movie.

Financing is an issue for many filmmakers everywhere including Hollywood especially for filmmakers of color. What advice can you give them on getting financing?

It's a miracle to get a film made in Hollywood. It was hard to get the story of a middle class African American family made. It is rough. Other models are needed even in the independent arena. It's really hard to get projects green lit in independent studios or even in the independent arm of the major studios.

With your track record and at your level what amount of power do you wield in Hollywood?

For most people it's hard to get meetings. I can get meetings, but then getting a movie green lit (made) is a whole different story. There's an A list of producers and there are very few women in the industry. I still have 15 year old scripts I'd like produced. I have 14 year old scripts I'm trying to make with two European women.

What is the current status quo of getting films for people of color made in Hollywood?

Right now there are few people of color who are "green lighters," which are people with the power to approve a movie in a studio. There are no gate keepers for black filmmakers at the studio level. However, there are people like that right under that level and they will move up in time. There are a few brilliant women of color on the scene. For example, Zolla Mashariki, Senior Vice President of Production at Fox Searchlight is heading in the direction of being a powerful person in the industry. There are many more on the cusp as well. However, the environment is dynamic, so faces change, but one must persevere.

What can you tell people, especially women, about the work ethic required to thrive in your field?

A director is responsible for the look, feel and effect of the film. The hours are long and it's not an easy job, but hard work is a prelude to success.

Have you made artistic choices you would rather have not?

Yes. For example, the Uncle Tony Character that I was very passionate about was removed from Eve's Bayou. We compromised and it was included in the director's cut.

What different styles do you use in your filmmaking process?

Storytelling is about the shots and the story. I've shot with special lenses generating distorted images. Eve's Bayou is very artistic, more like an art film where each shot is fluid like a painting and there's less camera movement, while Talk To Me is more of a musical movement of the camera and has less movement of the camera.

What challenges do you face in the process?

Filmmaking is often likened to a war, but it's now easier than ever to make films. However, with the distribution and marketing model, it's hard to make money. Filmmaking is now cheaper, making it more accessible to people. You and your friends can make a movie and send it to a film festival. Festivals let films be seen by an audience who otherwise may not see it, but in the same vein film festivals like Sundance and others are overwhelmed with submissions. Most films they receive are mediocre, occasionally it's a very good job done.

What are your thoughts on the current distribution model?

Distribution is tricky. For example, out of 800 films at Sundance, 8 get distributed, so good content is essential. A different model other than the release in theater model is part of the future. It's very difficult to get theater release. Films in theaters isn't about the film, it's about selling popcorn and snacks. There are fewer venues to hold and run a movie. I try to be flexible and modern in a lot of ways, but I'm still a dinosaur who needs film and a dark theater. The future will have a different model, which will be a way people can get their films seen.

What would you like to do in the future?

There are so many things I want to do. I want to direct an opera, an arboretum, write a novel, and run a film festival.

What are you working on now?

A gospel musical titled, The Black Nativity. It's a film adaptation of the very slender book Langston Hues wrote in 1961. At the time it was very controversial. The story is about a kid from Baltimore whose mother has to send him to live with her estranged parents. He's dealing with people he didn't know including his grandmother who is a preacher; he falls in a deep sleep at church and dreams of the black nativity. It's going to be dope.

Why did you choose that theme?

Growing up in Boston, annually my mom took me to see the black nativity which is a black gospel musical on the birth of Jesus. About 500,000 people see it annually, so it's a really popular theme all over the country. It's ultimately a celebration of the black church, and I feel it's a great time for such a theme with an African American president in office.

What is your legacy that you would like to be remembered for?

I'm so not done, so I wouldn't use the word legacy. I have a long way to go before I feel satisfied. However, I want to be remembered for raising the bar.

As Kasi has shared, few women of color exist in the film industry, causing few minority movies to be made and when they are made, they often depict negative stereotypes. Therefore, people of color especially women need to know what they're diving into when thinking about becoming filmmakers.

However, as she stated, we need more women especially of color to add to the current monolithic Hollywood tapestry because the way women view and tell stories is different from how men do it, as women have a peculiar way of viewing the world often through emotions.

By nurturing new talent on and off camera, Kasi is doing her part to increase the low numbers. Although filmmaking isn't an easy fete, she has also shown that even a story based loosely on one's family and childhood can be made into a successful movie if written and shot in a unique way.

So to women desiring to become filmmakers or assume powerful positions in the entertainment industry, I say, thoroughly research what lies ahead, but know that it can be done. To movie viewers, I say, support movies made by women of color during the opening weekend if you want to see more of such movies and make sure the ticket stub you receive shows the actual movie you paid for. Don't accept being told to just go in with another movie title on your ticket stub, because it counts when Hollywood executives are making decisions about what films to make.

Paul Robeson, the man the award she was in town to receive is named after was praised and dammed for his devotion to the African American struggle. His motto was, "Get them to sing your song and they will wonder who you are." I watched Kasi's movie and wondered who she is. Many others watched and gave her awards. When I met her, I came to even appreciate her more for the woman of substance she is, and although she shared that filmmaking is challenging, she also said that it is very fulfilling for her, so I know greater projects lay ahead for her and I can’t wait to see them.

Uh-oh. I have a feeling this is going to be a slightly emo post, which is, like, so last decade. Il muhim…

It has been a mad few hours, I don’t know where to begin, I’m not sure there is even a beginning.

I was heading to the north-east of Gaza, to write a report on the repeated attacks on a family home which is located 340 metres from Israel. Their case has always one that kept offering some kinda bizarre punch to the gut with every extra moment I spent talking to one of them, but I really didn’t think I could learn any more about their story that would make it worse. As usual, I was wrong.

But what am I saying? That is no beginning!

As we were driving northwards this afternoon, I spotted the reflection of my sunglasses in the window of the car. I thought nothing of it and continued talking to a colleague. About a minute later, the reflection caught my attention again and as my eyes adjusted I saw five smoky lines dropping vertically from the sky. At the tip of each smoke-line was a sharp, bright light. You could almost mistake them for fireworks had they not moved so slowly and precisely, simply gliding like melted butter down a knife, to the people below. I’m no expert on weapons, but I know one when I see one. And this damn sure looked like the white phosphorus that Israel ‘wasn’t using’ during Cast Lead two and a half years ago.

I am so furious at the driver for his repeatedly ill-calculated stops on the highway , resulting in my snapping of not a single, solitary photograph. Absolutely bloody furious.

We continued our drive to visit the family we had arranged a meeting with. I’m writing a report for them to submit to UNRWA in order to help them build a new house, as their current one has been shelled three times.

As I sat down with the father of the family, he retold the story that I thought I knew so well. I don’t have the time, energy or remaining skin on my wrists (because of all the keyboard-chaffing, people, not because I’m a real emo) to go through the entire story this minute. But here are a few things I discovered that the family had survived:

The women and children were used as human shields to when Palestinian resistance fighters were targeting Israeli tanks which had crossed into Gaza. While the women and children were placed in front of the tanks, the men were collected and left in a ditch.

One tank pierced the irrigation system and when the family dug a hole in order to access and repair it, the piping was ripped out, and dragged away. It came with the line “Nobody is allowed to dig here!”

Last night I was speaking to a friend, challenging him to find something to make me well up. Today all it took was a father to say “All I care about is my children, I just want them to be safe.”

Somehow the area where the family lives seems almost holy, despite all the tragedy it has seen. I was overcome with an urge to bow down. I grabbed a prayer mat, threw it on the floor, and furiously hit the ground with my forehead. Directly in front of me was an Israeli watchtower. This prayer could easily be interpreted as submission to the fence that obstructed my path to the Ka’aba, or to the watchtower and its gun-wielding occupier. But to me, it felt like the most powerful act of resistance I’ve ever done. I don’t care how many watchtowers you put in front of me. Nothing will obstruct the truth. I will pray in plain sight and you can wield whatever weapon you like at my face. I fucking dare you.

I never swear. Yet here we are. This is what this occupation reduces me to. My eyes welled up again, and I’m going to pretend it was from all the dust.

As we strolled back to the entrance to the farm, nothing seemed shocking anymore. My body was physically reacting to everything I had just heard, in a way I’ve never experienced before. My throat and sternum seized up, like I’d spent the afternoon swallowing stones.

While gunshots sounded from a few hundred metres away, I sat aloofly petting newborn kittens and as a friend teased my resolve, I found words pouring out from between my teeth, words that I didn’t even think. They just escaped, bypassing my brain.

“I’d give my life for this cause, don’t you understand that?”

Khalas, man

Jose Luis Patrola is a history professor, farmer, and member of the Brazilian land reform group, the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement, or MST. He has lived in Haiti for three years. There, he coordinates the MST’s program, an exchange of agricultural and technical cooperation between Haitians and Brazilians. In a departure from many international programs of “teaching” and “aiding” Haitians, Patrola speaks here about mutual learning and respect.

We are here in Haiti in an educational solidarity exchange program. We’re not here to teach. We are here to learn.

In our work, there’s great respect for Haitian farmers and movements. That’s something that has been greatly lacking: respect. Not only from foreigners, but from Haitian elites who don’t acknowledge their own peoples.

The MST and the Vía Campesina [a coalition of farmers and landless people’s organizations from around the world] in Brazil have had contact with small farmers in Haiti for many years now. Since 2004, we’d been thinking about a solidarity exchange program between campesino [small farmer] movements in Brazil and Haiti. We were finally able to make this possible starting in January 2009, when the MST and other small farmers’ organizations from Brazil sent a brigade of four people to identify what the solidarity exchange would look like. The exchange now works to achieve horizontal solidarity between these farmers.

With the earthquake in January [2010], things changed a little, and movements in Haiti suggested to us the possibility of strengthening the brigade with more Brazilians. We organized a brigade of 31 people, who sleep and eat in the Haitian farmers’ homes.

There are different farmer movements from Brazil that are participating. The MST is the biggest group, but there’s also the Movement of Small-scale Agriculturalists, the Movement of Women Campesinas, the Movement of Dam-Affected People, and the Pastoral Commission of the Earth that’s part of the Catholic Church, and a representative of the Movement of Unemployed Workers.

The brigade consists of people with different skills. We have farmers. We have technical agronomists that are also children of farmers. We have veterinarians, professors, construction specialists, and two medics. We’re doing a little bit of everything; the diversity is very important. A doctor, for example, helped install a cistern for water catchment, and professors are also working the land.

• Brazilian and Haitian farmers are together constructing 1,200 cisterns in rural Haiti. Photo: Federico Matias. •

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. You can access all of her past articles regarding post-earthquake Haiti at www.otherworldsarepossible.org/haiti.

• Soul Sisters flyer •

As the protagonist, Sade George, a Nigerian immigrant and medical student seeking greener pastures in Boston, Massachusetts laments, “In the past they were forcing us into slavery, but today, we’re voluntarily selling ourselves into it,” viewers are quickly drawn into the movie’s plot, which the talented cast brilliantly bring to life.

This award winning movie recently won the 2011 African Movie Academy Award’s (AMAA) Best Film for African Abroad Award, the 2010 Best Emerging Filmmaker Award at the Roxbury International Film Festival and Artist of the Year in Boston last year. It was also officially screened at the Cannes Pan African Film Festival and it has also been screened to critical acclaim at the International Black Film Festival in Montreal, the Mid-Atlantic Black Film Festival in Virginia, and the Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles. Other film festivals around the world such as the African, Asian and Latin American Film Festival in Italy, have made requests for the movie to be screened at their festivals.

This movie which is a fictionalized account of real life experiences is a must see for everyone, especially African Americans and Africans in Africa and in the diaspora because it helps in educating us about our perceptions of each other.

Synopsis: In America: The Story of the Soul Sisters is the story of the inspiring friendship between two young women, Sade George and Sonya Muhammad. Sade is an “illegal immigrant,” a medical student from one of Nigerian universities, who abandoned her education in the fourth year and seized the scant opportunity to flee her birth land for the perceived opportunities of America. Sonya is an African-American young woman dealing with the pressure of cultural ambiguity, struggling with the separation of her loving parents, and seeking an identity that is articulate of her soul’s yearning.

In America, Sade hopes to settle down and continue her education, but what life holds in stock for her is different. Through the lives of a lonely and sexually frustrated uncle, and the conflicted life of a young man trapped in the racial forces of the American society, Sade’s journey reveals the various existential elements that, often innocently, combine to determine the experience of the individual anywhere in the world.

When Sonya meets Sade, they feel a connection that grows into a relationship that will lead them to individual and mutual self-discovery, and help define life for both of them. Empowered thus, Sade faces the present bane of her life: the American immigration policy. Disillusioned about the American dream, she has to make a decision what step to take next: remain in America as an “illegal alien” or return to her homeland.

The Cast: The movie parades a sterling cast which includes: Jimmy Jean-Louis of Heroes and Phat Girlz, Mirlyne Dorvilus, Kandace Cummings, Cristian DeJesus, Roger Dillingham and Linda Starks.

The Producers' Motivation: The primary motive behind this movie is the wish to deal with the immigration issue from human perspective. In an attempt to enlighten the ambivalent American perspectives on the issue, I wanted to show the humanity of immigrants, and how they are like every other American, with dreams, hopes, fears, and character complexities. At this time in the history of America, we think the climate is ripe for such a movie, and this is one of the reasons we were very passionate about getting it made. The movie doesn't intend to take sides or argue a point in the on-going immigration debate, however, it is an artistic venture to reveal the life of a typical immigrant, and provides the debaters with additional information about the subjects of their arguments, symbolized in the character of Sade George.

• Sade George and Sonya Muhammad •

Yvon Alteon is the Co-Executive Producer and Co-Producers include Jimmy Jean-Louis and Vatasha Granberry.

Format: The film was shot in 720 HD and has a running time of 100 minutes

Availability: The movie will be available at Silverbird, Genesis, Ozone and other cinemas in Nigeria and Ghana in July 2011

For more information please visit the film’s official website, http://soulsistersthemovie.com/.

I have a mild obsession with Scandinavian cinema, so I was super excited to see a new Swedish film called Four More Years playing at Frameline. And to make it even better there was a screening in Berkeley, so I didn't even have to cross the bay. Four More Years is a politically charged romantic comedy with a LGBT twist. I don't want to say anything else for fear of revealing crucial plot deals, but it is honestly one of the most enjoyable and wittiest films I've seen in awhile.

Four More Years is playing again tonight at the Castro Theater in San Francisco at 9:30 p.m. Director Tova Magnusson along with actors Bjorn Kjellman and Eric Ericson will be in attendance. Tickets are $11.

The opportunity to go work in the Sacred Valley of Peru with the Andean Alliance and the Becky Fund was unexpected and extremely exciting. In just a few short weeks, I was subletting my apartment, storing extra furniture, and packing for the mountains. When I was asked to write about my expectations for the trip, my initial reaction was somewhat anxious and nervous. During the course of my education at the Monterey Institute, I have had the opportunity to participate in many organizations as a consultant. However, in each of these opportunities, I had the safety net of a professor and professional for quality control, reassurance, and instant feedback. This summer is to be my first completely autonomous project. Upon further reflection, I realized that I am surrounded by 18 other students, each of whom bring a wide range of experiences, expertise, and knowledge to the table. Although my colleague and I have been given the creative freedom to carry out our project, we are doing so with the love and support of a new found family. There is nothing more uplifting and motivating than that.

Upon our arrival in Cusco, I laughed at how different this summer will be compared to the previous, when I worked in the heat of Alabama during the Deep Water Horizon Spill as part of the avian rehabilitation crew. Now, some 11,000 feet above sea level, I wear many layers to protect from the south hemisphere's winter cold and I listen to the people to know how I can help them.

My first opportunity to do this came shortly after my arrival in Peru after a four-hour bus ride through the windy, mountain roads to the small, indigenous community of Ccachin.

A crew of excited, pink faced and snotty nosed 5 year olds, all dressed in the traditional garb of the Andean Indigenous community greeted our team. Hand in hand we walked through a giant soccer field where one hundred more children anxiously awaited our arrival. They ranged from 3-11 years old, until the secondary school students, who are 12-17 years of age, later joined us. This was our reception celebration, a cultural exchange chalk full of native dances, poetry, songs, and speeches of gratitude for what Aaron, The Becky Fund, and The Andean Alliance were doing for the community.

The event started with a bridging of cultures by means that I felt were most appropriate: Bubbles. When we heard we had time to play before the event, I invited a few children to join me for a gift; it was only nanoseconds before all 150 students were surrounding me with anticipation and curiosity as to what I would pull out of my bag. I have been told that many of them had probably never experienced bubbles, and I can’t express how grateful I am to have participated in this simple joy that children, around the world, share. The next thirty minutes were full of giggles, screams of joy, lessons on how to blow the most bubbles, throwing hats to pop the bubbles carried high above by the wind, and seemingly endless excitement. The children made short order of the two containers of bubbles I brought, but the long-lasting memories we created together, I will never forget.

After a colorful reception, we were all touch by the sincerity of the Mayor of Lares, when he took a moment to thank each of us personally for our contribution to the community and to express his excitement for our partnership in the future.

The next day, after an extremely productive meeting with the entire Team Peru group, we began moving the forty-pound bricks from the school, where they were made, down to the garden where the green houses are to be constructed. An assembly line of over forty people covering a few hundred yards between the two areas passed almost 500 bricks in a matter of hours. Tired as we were, caked in dirt and mud, not a single person complained of bruises on their forearms or the weakness of their legs. Together, we worked as a team and made a huge contribution to the final product. We finished the weekend by moving two truckloads of heavy rocks and one hundred more bricks. Not everyone is cut out for heavy lifting and manual labor, but each of us involved in the work this weekend is proud to say we worked hard, we worked long, and we contributed to the nutritional development of the Ccachin region.

For more information about the current projects please visit http://blogs.miis.edu/teamperu/

It is warm and a humid afternoon. At this obscure homestead within Engashura Village in Nakuru County in Kenya, 78 year old Naomi Njoki undertakes her domestic chores amidst shrieks and animated chats by scores of her grandchildren.

• Naomi Njoki, the disenchanted freedom fighter. Picture by Peter Kahare •

Njoki Continues: “Politicians are no longer patriotic. They have no interest of common Kenyans and the country at heart; they are selfish and interested only in self aggrandizement. Kenyan politicians are over obsessed with acquiring wealth and power and will do anything to get it.”

“Taxation, food and fuel prices have skyrocketed beyond comparison to what we were paying in terms of hut tax; the government must act as a matter of urgency,” goes on Njoki.


The former freedom fighter is upset that rampant corruption, shameless grabbing of public land, ugly physical and verbal confrontations among politicians are clear indicators that they are not keen on serving the electorate. “Look around, all you see are suffering masses ravaged by poverty, disease and illiteracy in a country that has enjoyed independence for more than four decades,” laments Njoki. “Those were not the aspirations of Kenya’s founding fathers Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya, Daniel arap Moi, Mwai Kibaki, Wycliffe Works Waswa, Achieng Oneko and Paul Ngei among others.”

She is among few remaining freedom heroes who continue living in poverty and dying poor people. She is not alone; Ngei, Oneko, Kagia and a host of others lived a desolate life and died sick, poor paupers. Njoki is lucky to have her children and grandchildren by her side to support her materially.

Njoki vividly recounts events that preceded the Mau Mau war of independence terming the experiences African natives underwent at the hands of colonialists as harrowing.

“Initial resistance to British rule was spurred by a decision by the colonial administration to bar boys from attending schools. Some were herded into labour camps while a significant proportion was conscripted into humiliating menial jobs such as grazing and milking of livestock,” she recollects.

Njoki reminisces that a white man had been tasked to enforce a rule that restrained the number of livestock a native could rear.

“It was decreed that the maximum number of animals that an African could rear was to be 15 whilst those who had excess had to dispose them off. The rule was enforced with alarming alacrity that was couched in brutality and intimidation,” she narrates.

Sustained onslaught on the natives by the colonial administration constrained the now furious mass to troop into the then nascent Kenya African Union (KAU), a clandestine organization.

“Once we were at a flower garden at Kinangop on Saturday when an airplane dropped copies of newspapers indicating that 6 million whites were due in the country anytime,” Njoki says.

Njoki shudders when she recalls how she sustained a gunshot on her left groin and had to contend with concoctions derived from tree barks for three days.

“It was a heart rendering experience as I could not visit any medical facility for that would be taking an obvious risk and would have promptly been locked up and eventually killed as a Mau Mau sympathizer,” Njoki explains.

During the period of pain and agony, Njoki was hidden under the bed unconscious due to the blast she heard when she was shot. She is full of praise and of gratitude to God that her life was spared miraculously.

As the crackdown on nationalists intensified, Africans were confined in a ‘’Kiugo’’ (trench) which was dug. At the end of the trench stood armed policemen to guard them not to run away.

Njoki recalls 1952 when the state of emergency was declared a crackdown on suspected members of the now vibrant Mau Mau movement went a notch higher.

“I count myself as lucky to be alive as the out of the 170 members of a squad I was in, led by Kigo Waboka, only three people survived. We came under attack from colonial forces backed by airplanes in the Aberdare at Kederedu forest,” she says.

Other squads that fought alongside Njoki’s platoon were led by the likes of Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi, LCM Wokabi among others.

She says that for the past 47 years of the country’s independence, the state has turned a blind eye to thousands of freedom fighters’ plight who are wallowing in abject poverty.

“Government officials always tumble running to funerals of freedom heroes to pay insincere homage and shout hypocritical pledges, We fought for this independence but genuine persons are not the ones who are reaping the fruits of that struggle as home-guards walloped us and impropriated huge chunks of lands rendering millions landless,” she says.

The freedom fighter is angered as she is yet to receive any cash from the government’s Older Persons Cash Transfer Programme where recipients are to be paid Kshs 3,000 ($40) per month.

“These funds are still on a lower scale. The state needs to get very serious and address strategies that will greatly improve our standards of living,” she adds.

President Mwai Kibaki is the first one to have offered some recognition to remnants of freedom fighters where they saunter in past main dais each during heroes' day marked every year.

Peter Kahare is a freelance journalist based in Nakuru County of Rift Valley province in Kenya, East Africa.

According to Kenya Forest Services and Environmentalists, the forest areas around Mau forest which is 400, 000 hectares have highest rainfall rates. Numerous rivers (over 12); flow from the complex to different lakes within and outside Rift Valley Province. At its highest pick, Mau forest is usually a site to behold, massive rivers rumbling their courses between valleys and ridges, wild animals crisscrossing the valleys and green vegetation that coat the canopy of the remaining indigenous tall trees. In 1980s and 90s people were irregularly allocated land by the then KANU government within the Mau forest and now the current administration of the coalition arrangement has found it urgently necessary to swallow the bitter pill and save the complex the painful way…. My Tour to the Mau revealed that the government is indeed resolved to evicting all illegal occupants left, causing the catchments political temperatures to rise exponentially.

As the world marked the Environment Day on June 5 focus in Kenya shifted to conservation and management of a key natural resource - forest. It is this resource that has occasioned a tug of war for the better part of the last two years between political leaders in the largest province Rift Valley and the office of the Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

Rift Valley province is endowed with several outstanding physical features; the Menengai crater, hot springs of Lake Bogoria, wild animals and birds of Lake Nakuru among others. However at the heart of the Valley is one gigantic body of overriding blocks of forest originally divided into 22 blocks and touching all ends, North, South, East and Western sides - The controversial Mau forest complex that has deepened the valley and widened the rift between legislators representing communities residing in forest and the office of the Prime Minster. Weather has drastically changed in many parts of the country with temperatures increasing phenomenon weather experts and environmentalists attribute to destruction of Mau forest and other water catchments. Members of parliament from North Rift region led by Roads Minister Franklin Bett and his counter part and former Agriculture Minister William Ruto have not denied presence of settlers in the Mau but have sharply differed with the government on the relocation process insisting that the squatters should be given a land elsewhere. The legislators have opposed the relocation something that has severed their relations with the P.M. Will the P.M and the legislators who supported him hundred percent in 2007 general elections ever reconcile? Who will blink first? Only time in will tell.

The Mau forest was affected by wild fires in 2009 believed to have been largely as a result of arsonists and farming activities, a fire that destroyed over 3000 hectares of mostly plantations and indigenous trees. The incident piled more pressure on the government to move swiftly and rescue the forest by evicting the people there in. Kenya Forest Services (K.F.S) director David Mbugua says Mau complex is currently a collection of over seven blocks of forest and borders Nakuru town to the North, Narok to the South and Kericho to the West. Mbugua says that water from the Mau serves more than 4 million people located in 578 different areas in Kenya and parts of Northern Tanzania.

“Over twelve rivers that flow from Mau feed Lakes Nakuru, Baringo, Bogoria, Victoria, Elementaita and Natron,” adds Mbugua. River Mara that flows from the Mau presents a spectacular annual event pitting crocodiles and thousands of wild beasts as they cross to and from Serengeti in Tanzania. The dramatic event has been recorded as one of the wonders of the world. However my visit to the source of Mara recently revealed that the source had sadly became seasonal.

“Rivers Sondu, Yala and Nyando also emanate from Mau and end at Lake Victoria while Rivers Njoro and Makalia feed Lake Nakuru. Other rivers include Ewaso Nyiro, Kerio and Mara. Lakes Natron and Turkana which are important flamingos’ breeding areas get water from Mau,” Mbugua goes on.

Kenya Wildlife Services (K.W.S) Director Julius Kipngetich avers that Mau forest is habitat to some endangered mammals like buffaloes, bongo antelope, blue and red-tailed monkeys and different species of birds.

“The government is now seeking Sh.38 billion to rescue all these from eventual disappearance and mitigate increasingly deteriorating weather patterns in two years time,” says the Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

The debate to save the 400, 000 hectares of the largest water tower in the country started in 2009 and the rift between politicians representing people residing in the Mau and the Prime Minister has widened ever since. The responsibility to spear head rehabilitation of the complex was placed on the shoulders of the Prime Minister Odinga by the office of the President. The task has proved onerous for the P.M. who is overly determined to ensure completion of work of restoration of the complex.

To show the seriousness in the rehabilitation efforts the government formed an Interim Coordinating Secretariat to head the two-year program of saving the greatly eroded Mau forest complex. Coincidentally the man picked to head the secretariat was the immediate former Provincial Commissioner of Rift Valley Province Hassan Noor. Hassan perhaps chosen owing to his vast experience in the administrative nature of the area and demographic distribution of the expansive province.

According to a report by a commission appointed to investigate land grabbing in the country, “illegal settlers who started trickling in to the forest in 1980’s and 90’s also include some senior politicians, civil servants and business people in the current and former president Daniel Moi’s governments.

Many of the allocations by former KANU government were done as political bait to win loyalty from the residents the report says.” The report also states that former president Moi was a beneficially of the Mau allocation with up to 10, 000 hectares of land belonging to him under tea crop dubbed Kiptagich tea farm. Chief coordinator of the secretariat on Mau Hassan Noor has however maintained that the Kiptagich settlement was not affected by the first phase of eviction. The land report of 2004 written by Ndung’u Commission termed the allocation of land in Mau as illegal and recommended revocation of the same.

The prolonged deterioration of climatic conditions in the country pushed the government, private sector and international community to act fast and save major water towers in the country from total destruction. Most of the illegal settlers of the Mau, the report indicates, came from different districts including Bomet, Bureti, Kipkelion, Nandi, Kericho, Kuresoi and Trans Mara district. Drying of many rivers and Lakes in the Rift Valley and other provinces has been attributed to Mau degradation through tree felling by the settlers. However, several business people in Nakuru led by one Francis Karanja have refuted claims that members of one community as mentioned by the report were the only ones affected by the eviction orders. Karanja says that he was also a “beneficiary of the allocation at Kapseita in East Mau and was ready to surrender the title deed.”

Kapsita is in Elburgon Township where 5000 people settled. The government has now decided that both the legal and illegal settlers must pack and leave to their land of nativity and pave way for rehabilitation of the forest. The only group regarded as indigenous people according to historical documents in the Mau forest are the Ogiek who make up a population of 5,484 people. Their activities of hunting and gathering are deemed as harmless to the forest. After the lapse of a deadline to willingly leave the forest, the bitter reality dawned on the settlers when they saw forest rangers and Administration police officers arriving in the forest. The mere presence of the armed officers in the 19, 000 hectares of South Western Mau was enough for the squatters to start leaving voluntarily. The picture that captures your attention as you approach the forest where there are over 15 camps in the South Western Mau is that of desperation with haggard looking settlers expressing their disbelieve at the move by the government.

One Rachel Segemchumo camping at Lalpanget at Kiptagich claims that the settlers were victims of "rich people who acquired land in Mau then sold it to the poor plus the administration that also dished out the land to the majority underprivileged people." Her sentiments are echoed by many other evictees. The squatters are however coming to terms with the reality of leaving their former homes but have refused to board Lorries provided by the government to take them back to their respective home districts. Structures supported on bamboo sticks, green twigs and leaves are currently homes to the victims of illegal apportionment of land who have now found themselves at the end of their wits.

The rainy season has only served to worsen the situation; children squirm near the fireplace as their parents keep their eyes at the horizons in expectancy of any relief that could come their way. Cold related illnesses have also begun taking toll on many settlers and the number is rising each day with many being taken to the hospital.

The government has deployed hundreds of officers who urged the squatters to start leaving the forest since the notice had expired. Currently over 5000 settlers have pitched camps at different locations not knowing their next direction. “They are not supposed to form new camps within the forest but are supposed to move away to the districts they came from” says an officer from administration police who does not want to be mentioned due to sensitivity of the matter.

Kuresoi district commissioner Silas Gitobu has assured over 300 hundred families camping at Kipkambu camp that “the food rations supplied to them were the first and the last ones which were meant to sustain them as they return to their home districts.” The government has maintained that the settlers came from different districts that were their homes and were therefore supposed to go back. The first phase of the eviction that affects over 1,650 families, the government asserts has so far assisted reclaiming over fifty percent of Mau forestland.

Peter Kahare is a freelance journalist based in Nakuru County of Rift Valley province in Kenya, East Africa.

One of my favorite Bay Area film festivals, Frameline began tonight and continues through June 26. It's the festival's 35th anniversary, and the selection of films could not be better.

Throughout the festival, I will be writing about my favorite films and experiences at the festival. So, stay tuned!

Like most people active today in nature and animal conservancy, I was raised to appreciate the world beyond video games and the TV. I grew up spending most of my life outside of walls and in the world of animals. By the age of ten I had become focused heavily on birds, whales, sharks, and snakes. By the time I had my driver’s license I had enough biology knowledge to be correcting my science and biology teachers. I became active in high school with environmental and conservation groups as I began to see the writing on the wall…the future of nature was in danger. I organized petition drives against oil drilling off the California Coast among many other endeavors to play my part in preserving the future of our wild world.

• California Quail © Chris Hartzell •

Several years later now, we are known for our world traveling and great photography. We share our experiences through our company PhotoStrokes.net. Hauling our cameras around the globe together, we have been lucky to explore first-hand, places that most people dream about. A Cheetah stalking in the Serengeti, a Meerkat perched atop my head in Botswana, an Andean Condor soaring above us, Musk Ox in the Arctic Circle, a Great White Shark following us with his eye as he passes a couple feet in front of us, rubbing the belly of a Manatee, fending a curious Tiger Shark off with just a camera, and laughing at the squirting sounds of Marine Iguanas spitting salt in the Galapagos are among a few of our experiences.

Through all of that, one thing we have grown to appreciate is how wonderful the feeling is to be around these creatures. There is no food, no drug, nor roller coaster…nothing…that can duplicate that feeling. It is an addicting one-of-a-kind rush.

• Chris Hartzell •

If you include insects and plants with animal species, there have been more extinctions than discoveries since the time of the Vietnam War. If you view the numbers collectively, overall, the planet’s animal populations have reduced more than 50% since Darwin set foot on the Galapagos Islands. In 1885, just one shipment from South America to North America contained 60,000 hummingbirds to be used for women’s feathered hats. And it has gotten worse in the last decade: 85% reduction of the Giraffe population in Kenya’s Maasai Mara due to habitat loss in just four years, 70% loss to shark populations by shark finning in 10 years, 30% loss of Polar Bears to climate change in 10 years, and 60% loss of Gorillas and Rhinos to poachers in 10 years. In fact, just shortly after the Human Race celebrated the “next millennium”, the Northern White Rhino went extinct from the wild.

• Ame, Chris, and Joe in Mexico. •

I had recently heard Timbaland’s song “Apologize”, and like many movie makers, started associating the song’s lyrics and rhythm with a story I wanted to tell visually. I had originally wanted to use the song for an upcoming Africa movie, but was having difficulty working out how I could place and use it appropriately. When this new short film project came about, using the song was the first thing I thought of. As my first short film, I am pleased with how it turned out; creating both a visual and thought-provoking educational film that brings awareness to the plight of animals. By airing it, I hope it educates…then inspires people…to realize NOW is the time to take action…or it will be too late.

To learn more about what you can do, check out the below sites.

If you’re unsure or have questions about how you can help, you can always contact me through our website, PhotoStrokes.net, and I can help you find a way to play a part.

There are thousands of organizations and movements worldwide. These are most of the top groups:

Serengeti Highway - Savetheserengeti.org/home
Wildlife conservation group - WorldWildlife.org
Wildlife conservation group - Defenders.org
Wildlife and environmental conservation group - Greenpeace.org
Ocean animal conservation group - Seasheperd.org
Ocean environmental conservation group - Oceanconservancy.org
Shark conservation group - Sharksavers.org
Shark conservation group - Sharkangels.org
Shark conservation group - Dorsalfriends.org
Tiger protection group - Wildtiger.org/wthome.html
Bird conservation group - Audubon.org
Nature conservation group - Nature.org
Lion conservation group - Lionconservation.org
Cheetah conservation group - Cheetah.org
Rhino conservation group - Rhinos-irf.org
African wild dog conservation group - Painteddog.org
African predator conservation group - Predatorconservation.com

Ayat al-Qarmezi, a 20-year-old woman poet in Bahrain, recently condemned to one year in prison, has become the human face of defiance against the regime ruling the country. Her crime, to have spoken at a pro-reform rally in Manama’s Pearl Roundabout in February. Unless the government changes its approach and accepts peaceful dissent, the seeds of resistance will flower in Bahrain.

Speaking at a rally, Ayat al-Qarmezi recited a poem among whose lyrics were, “We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery.” She was arrested after the police raided her parents’ house and threatened to kill her brothers if Ayat didn’t give herself up. During her detention she was whipped across her face with electric cable, held for days in a small cell with near-freezing temperatures and forced to clean lavatories with her bare hands, the same hands that wrote other beautiful verses.

One of her poems, translated from the Arabic by Ghias Aljundi, says:

We don’t like to live in a palace
And we are not after power
We are the people who
Break down humiliation
And discard oppression
With peace as our tool
We are people who
Do not want others to be living in the Dark Ages.

Ayat is one of many women – doctors and medical personnel among others - who have been targets of repression by Bahrain’s regime. Her detention has been harshly condemned by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations.

“By locking up a female poet merely for expressing her views in public, Bahrain’s authorities are demonstrating how free speech and assembly are brutally denied to ordinary Bahrainis,” stated Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Smart asked that the Bahraini authorities drop all unfair charges against Ayat al-Qarmezi, and release her immediately and unconditionally. His request follows President Barack Obama’s statement during the visit to Washington of Bahrain’s Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa that stability of the Gulf Kingdom “depends upon respect for universal human rights.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has joined the protests against the Bahrain regime’s actions, particularly regarding special military court proceedings against those arrested during the country’s anti-government protests. “Bahraini authorities should immediately halt all proceedings before the special military court and free everyone held solely for exercising the rights to free speech and peaceful assembly,” stated HRW, while at the same time demanding that all those charged with criminal offenses be tried in independent civilian courts.

The young Bahraini poet joins the ranks of other women in history who have written forcefully against brutality and oppression. In the book “Women Against Tyranny: Poems of Resistance During the Holocaust,” edited by Davi Walders, Marianne Baum, one of the creators of the Baum Group, a resistance group opposing the Nazis from 1937 until 1942 when most were arrested and sent to concentration camps, wrote,

They hunted us. Retaliation everywhere.
Then the Sondergericht –‘special court.’
They carried me there, my shattered legs
dangling. No one talked. A hundred
Berliners rounded up for each of us.
Five hundred –most shot there and then;
The rest, slower deaths at Sachsenhausen.
This, too, our burden, but…would they
Have died anyway? You must understand.

We had to do something.

Changing a few circumstantial details, those words could have been written by Ayat al-Qarmezi today in Bahrain.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.

My top pick for the Another Hole in the Head Film Festival, which is currently on in San Francisco is The Oregonian. The film's final screening is on Thursday June 16 at 7:20 p.m.

The festival's closing film, Grave Encounters will also be playing on Thursday at 9:20 p.m. And of course, there is the closing party on Friday night!

The festival continues through Friday June 17, so go and have fun!

The discovery that two new drugs can control melanoma offers hope for the treatment of this cancer that has devastating consequences in humans. Melanoma is cancer of the pigment cells in the skin. Although it accounts for only 4% of all skin cancers, it is responsible for almost 80% of the deaths, particularly because it tends to spread early in its course. This recent finding can revolutionize the treatment not only of melanoma but of other cancers as well.

Melanoma kills by spreading through blood and lymph nodes into the internal organs of the body. This is what makes it more dangerous than other skin cancers which don’t metastasize as easily. A melanoma the size of a dime on the skin has a 50% chance of having already spread. In addition, melanoma is spreading faster than any other kind of cancer in the United States. It is estimated that at least one person in the country dies of skin cancer every hour.

One study focused on an experimental drug called Vemurafenib. The drug was given to 675 people worldwide who had late stage metastatic melanoma. The drug acts by targeting a mutated gene that tells cancer cells to grow rapidly in 50 percent of melanoma patients who carry this mutation. In patients with this mutation, the drug not only killed cancer cells but shrunk the size of tumors as well. Vemurafenib, which is taken orally, has fewer side effects than traditional chemotherapy.

Tumors result from cell growth that gets out of control. Those patients who were responsive to Vemurafenib had a mutation in a gene called BRAF, which results in a protein being produced which makes the cells multiply out of control and form tumors. Vemurafenib acts by neutralizing the effects of the mutation in the BRAF gene. What makes this finding particularly important is that a similar approach may be tried on other cancers whose origins can be traced to a genetic mutation.

The role of the BRAF mutation in the production of melanoma had been discovered in 2002 by scientists at the Sanger Institute in Britain. Since then, researchers both in Britain and in the US have been working to see whether drugs targeting the mutation might interfere with tumor growth. Although initial trials were disappointing, a new formulation of the drug under study increased its penetration in the target cells and allowed to obtain better results.

Prior to this study there were no treatment options for dealing with metastatic melanoma resulting from the BRAF mutation. “Until now, available therapies [for metastatic melanoma] were few and unreliable, so these findings can really change the outlook for patients whose tumors are fueled by this mutation,” stated Keith Flaherty, MD, director of Development Therapeutics at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, lead and corresponding author of the article describing the effects of the new drug.

In a second study, a drug called Ipilimumab, sold under the trade name Yervoy, was tested for its effects on melanoma patients with advanced disease. Yervoy acts differently than Vemurafenib since it does not target cancer cells but instead stimulates the patients’ immune system response. The study with this drug showed that 21 percent of patients treated with Yervoy were alive after three years compared to 12 percent of patients who had received traditional chemotherapy or a placebo.

Because Ipilimumab acts by stimulating the patients’ immune system it can have serious side effects. An important side effect observed was liver damage. An additional disadvantage in the use of both drugs is the elevated cost of treatment. However, given the promising results so far, efforts are underway to see the effects of both drugs used in the same patients. If initial results are improved, we may be facing a radically new and effective treatment not only of melanoma but of other cancers as well.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is an international public health consultant. He conducted research in molecular genetics at the Public Health Institute of the City of New York.

The United Nations Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, has issued a very critical report of the U.S. on its policies on women’s rights. The report is based on a trip of the Special Rapporteur to the US from 24 January to 7 February 2011. During that trip, Ms. Rashida Manjoo broadly examined issues of violence against women in different settings. Her recommendations should provide fruitful material for the U.S. to improve its policies towards women.

As indicated in the report, “Violence against women occurs along a continuum in which the various forms of violence are often both causes and consequences of violence.” Domestic violence or Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is one of the most critical expressions of violence. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) 552,000 violent crimes by an intimate partner were committed against women in the U.S. in 2008.

Their husbands or intimate acquaintances are responsible for the majority of crimes against women. The Violence Policy Center states that the number of women shot and killed by their husbands or intimate acquaintances was four times higher than the total number of women murdered by male strangers using all weapons combined, according to an analysis of 2008 data.

Rape and sexual assault continue to be prevalent forms of violence against women in the country. According to the NCVS, 182,000 women were raped or sexually assaulted in the U.S. in 2008, i.e. approximately 500 women per day. In addition, there were 3.4 million persons who were victims of stalking, most of them women. One in 12 women and one in 45 men have been stalked in their lifetime in the U.S.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, the cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year. $4.1 billion of that amount is for direct medical and mental health services. Intimate partner violence incidents result in more than 18.5 million mental health care visits each year.

Children are also victims of violence carried out against their mothers. It has been shown that 30% to 60% of perpetrators of intimate partner violence also abuse children in the household. Witnessing violence between one’s parents or caretakers is the strongest risk factor for transmitting violent behavior among generations. In that regard, it has been shown that boys who witness domestic violence are twice as likely to abuse their own partners and children when they become adults.

Domestic violence offenses are one of the most chronically underreported crimes. It is estimated that only approximately one-quarter of all physical assaults, one-fifth of all rapes, and one-half of all stalkings carried out against females by intimate partners are reported to the police.

There are several reasons for these crimes not being reported. Among those reasons are: fear of retaliation from their abuser, the perception that the police will not respond adequately to the complaint or the belief that these are issues that should be privately addressed. According to a 2009 Department of Justice report, only 56% of intimate partner violence cases filed with the courts resulted in a conviction.

Women victims of domestic violence suffer a wide array of negative consequences, aside from the physical and psychological. Women victims of domestic violence face serious consequences in terms of economic instability, loss of employment and homelessness. In addition, violence against women is frequently seen among women in the military, women in detention, and among immigrant and undocumented women.

The extent of the phenomenon has made that violence against women is now recognized as an issue that belongs not only to the private sphere but that requires State intervention. According to the U.N. Rapporteur, the U.S. Government has taken positive legislative and policy initiatives to reduce the prevalence of violence against women.

Among those steps is the enactment and subsequent reauthorizations of the Violence against Women Act, as well as the establishment of dedicated offices on violence against women at the highest levels of government. However, according to the UN Rapporteur, more U.S. government actions are needed to curb a phenomenon that continues to cause tremendous harm to women’s health and quality of life.

Dr. Cesar Chelala, an international public health consultant, has written extensively on women’s health issues.

Why the US is lagging behind other countries when it comes to women in elected office and what can be done about it.

The United States has a poor track record of electing women to political office. The US is tied with Turkmenistan for 67th place, according to the Inter Parliamentary Union’s survey of women in national parliaments. The hope of adding more women fizzled even further in 2010, when the number of women in Congress fell from 90 to 88, the first decline in decades. Women fared even worse in state legislatures - 81 lost their seats.

More concerning than this recent dip is the fact that the number of women in American politics has flat-lined for decades. The problem, however, isn’t that women aren’t winning elections, it’s that they aren’t running. Studies show that women are more prone to seeing the hurdles rather than the benefits of a political career -- the intense media scrutiny and the concern for family members, particularly children. Moreover, in the past few years women thinking about public service have often referenced concern about the partisan and negative tone of campaigns and public debate.

But none of those are the biggest problem. According to research conducted by Rutgers' Center for American Women and Politics, women are less likely to be asked to run for office in the numbers that men are. The gender gap in recruitment has contributed to the gender gap in the candidate pool.

Tackling this recruitment gender gap is The 2012 Project, a national nonpartisan campaign in partnership with CAWP at Rutgers. The campaign takes recruitment to a new level by looking for women out of the traditional pipeline and women who may never have considered politics. These women, a previously untapped talent pool, are poised to be successful candidates but may need to be recruited directly to run.

The campaign functions as a matchmaker. Our faculty of former elected women legislators shares the facts about women's under-representation and the many benefits of public service. “We inspire women to step forward, learn about what they’ve done, and connect them with fundraising networks and think tanks. We identify them, and then we hand them off," explains Mary Hughes, the founder of The 2012 Project.

The election of 2012 presents a once-in-a-decade opportunity for women to increase their numbers in office. Following the 2010 census, every congressional and state legislative district in the country is being redrawn, and new and open seats will be created. Reapportionment creates opportunity, and research shows that women have more success winning open seats.

Women hold 17 percent of congressional seats, just six of 50 governorships and not even a quarter of state legislative posts. We have yet to break the 25 percent barrier at any level, let alone achieve parity for a group that’s more than half the U.S. population. The 2012 Project understands the urgency and the opportunity of the next election cycle. Consider this an invitation to help find great women -- or step forward yourself and run.

M. Doolan blogs for The 2012 Project. She is an associate with Hughes & Company, a political consulting firm in Palo Alto, California. Before moving into politics, Doolan was a radio and television reporter. She holds a Master’s in politics and communication from the London School of Economics.

Arriving on the East Coast at the end of May, I was excited to be embarking upon my journey for the summer as a peace fellow for The Advocacy Project. However, excited is a vast understatement. I am thrilled to be returning to the Balkans and yet I am anxious and nervous to see what this new opportunity will bring me in terms of education, emotions, and experience. As a student for the past 18 years, I now wrestle with the ever-approach reality of “growing up” and becoming an “adult” as I enter the last year of my graduate studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. This is my first practical step toward a meaningful and passionate career in conflict resolution and with the Balkans.

After having studied abroad in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2008 during my undergraduate career, I found myself drawn to this region both academically and personally. This summer brings an opportunity to work with remarkable women in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina at BOSFAM as they continue to strive to reconcile the horrors of the past and the trauma of the war in the 1990s with the present and the future. Many of these women, including BOSFAM's founder, Beba Hadzic, lost brothers, fathers, sons, uncles, and many members of their families in the brutal massacre outside of Srebrenica. They weave carpets and make quilts in order to tell their stories and be heard. Dealing with the past is an issue many from war-torn countries face and struggle to overcome. It is difficult for me, as a student of conflict resolution, to try to put myself in these shoes and be empathetic to their past, however, it is a critical step to delving deeper into the lives of others.

The further and deeper I get into my studies at the Monterey Institute and beyond, the more overwhelmed and interested I become. How can I be accepted when I come from such a different past and can be so easily seen as an outsider? How can I understand these women and what they have gone through? How can I even help? My questions continue to grow and multiply and my answers only lead to more and more questions. But yet, somehow, I am fine with this (thankfully so, since I have a feeling this will be the first of many times I wrangle with my questions and hesitations). I walk into my training and fellowship with an open and energetic mind, willing and accepting of the experiences and people that await me.

I will continue to post blogs and vlogs, as well as regular tweets and facebook updates.

As you know from my Sundance and SXSW coverage, I am a big fan of the midnight movie genre. Who doesn't want to sit in a theater and just have fun for a few hours? The Another Hole in the Head film festival is a whole film festival of midnight movies. Basically a good time every day for two weeks for moviegoers like me! And there are screening that start early enough that I can be back home and in bed by midnight. What generally holds be back from making it a midnight movie is exhaustion and the thought of arriving home at 3 a.m. ready to watch more movies rather than sleep.

Another Hole in the Head started on Thursday and continues through June 17th at San Francisco's Roxie Theater.

Throughout the festival I will be writing about some of my favorite movies and the fun I'm having at the festival. Stay tuned!

It was one of those smack-on-the-forehead, why-hadn’t-I-seen–that-before moments.

All forms of life either uses solar energy directly, like plants, or use plants that have already stored the sun’s energy to carry out all of their life functions.

All life on earth – except for a few bizarre life forms around deep sea thermal vents – uses the sun.

I had never realized all the implications of these everyday observations -- until I watched Janine Benyus’ TED talk (TED talks are fascinating ideas, presented by the innovators themselves to a live California audience, then distributed on the internet. See: www.ted.com. Sharing ideas is a topic for another time.)

Janine Benyus is a self-described “nature geek” with a love of nature that shines through as she describes what happens when you’re inspired by nature.

When facing a challenge, or examining some knotty problem, first consult Mother Nature. “There’s not a problem in the world that life itself hasn’t solved,” says Benyus, and all of nature’s solutions come with more that 3.8 billion years of field testing.

Life forms already know how to remove salt from water with minimal energy. They routinely self-assemble materials that far exceed what humankind can manage, from ultra-strong flexible spider silk or sea shells able to resist more force than a bullet-proof Kevlar vest.

Mother Nature already accomplishes what we’d like to with simple materials -- like minerals and proteins – with as little energy as possible.

By contrast, when human beings manufacture things, we heat up the material we’re using, beat it into shape and treat it with chemicals or coating to preserve it.

Mother Nature’s secret is adding information to matter, she explains.

Benyus has been defining a new approach to biomicry that is light years beyond what you may remember from biology classes or National Geographic specials.

No doubt we all know of innovations sparked by copying nature’s designs: Velcro was inspired by the way cockleburs hitch a ride on your sox when you walk past.

Benyus has redefined Biomimicry beyond simply copying from nature to learning from nature herself. Her book, “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature,” presented scholarly evidence.

Now the Biomimicry Institute offers opportunities to “imagine nature's most elegant ideas organized by design and engineering function,” so, for example, you can type in “remove salt from water,” and see how mangroves, penguins, and shorebirds desalinate. Without fossil fuels. Without damaging their environent. At normal temperatures and real world operating conditions.

Consider re-designing the human world by asking ourselves, “how would nature do this?”

We now get the energy we need and want by burning stuff, throwing pollutants into the air and water and wrecking our ecosystems.

We burn stuff. Like wood. Gathering wood has deforested huge sections of Africa. Whole civilizations, like the original inhabitants of Easter Island, have vanished after destroying their forests.

We mine coal to burn, sacrificing the lives of countless miners, removing mountain tops or tunneling beneath the surface, poisoning streams with heaps of mining waste and savaging the landscape.

We drill for oil on land and sea, pumping it to the surface and distributing it around the globe at an enormous cost – in terms of energy expended and the impact on every aspect of our environment. The social and geo-political costs of oil include the wars our country is now waging in Afghanistan, Iraq and the middle East.

We’ve barely begun to follow Mother Nature’s guiding principle and use the sun’s energy to create the life we want and need. In that regard, humankind doesn’t have the technical savvy of a shrub or a barnacle.

Mother Nature has other valuable lessons for us: She uses minimal energy, whatever the task may be, and she gathers energy for life functions in ways that enhance the environment so that life can continue.

Isn’t it time for us to start learning the basic lessons of Earth herself? What will it take to get our attention?

This article was originally published in Diana's bi-weekly column, Greening the Commons, in the Sequim Gazette.

Will Hamza al-Khateeb, the 13-year-old child tortured and killed by the government become Syria’s equivalent of Tunisia’s Mohamed Bouazizi whose immolation sparked a revolution that swept several Arab countries? Although the circumstances are different, the anger provoked by little Hamza’s torture and assassination will have serious consequences in the events now taking place in Syria. With Hamza’s cruel death, the Syrian government has crossed the Rubicon.

When Bashar al-Assad became Syria’s president in 2000, after the death of his father Hafez al-Assad, who had brutally ruled Syria for 29 years, there was hope that he would introduce drastic changes aimed at improving the human rights situation in the country. Those hopes were reinforced when soon after taking office he stated that he saw democracy as Syria’s tool to a better life, shut down the notorious Mezzeh prison, and released hundreds of political prisoners.

However, such hopes were soon dashed. Security crackdowns and the arrest of political opponents started again within a year of assuming power. Although in 2007, during an interview with ABC News he said that Syria didn’t have any political prisoners, it was reported in December of that year that 30 political opponents had been arrested.

In addition, several human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have documented how Bashar’s regime and its secret police routinely torture, imprison and kill political opponents and those who dare to speak out against the regime. After more than a decade in power, Bashar has led a repressive government, oblivious of the population’s most basic human rights. As stated by HRW, “Syria is still a de facto single-party state with only the Ba’ath Party holding effective power."

This situation has become even more evident following the last wave of protests which started on January 26. Although the Syrian government has ratified the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on July 1, 2004, torture has been widespread since the last uprising and, more ominously, has even included children, as Hamza’s torture and assassination demonstrate.

As indicated in HRW recent report "‘We've Never Seen Such Horror: Crimes against Humanity in Daraa," based on more than 50 interviews with victims and witnesses to abuses in Daraa governorate, security forces have killed hundreds of protesters and arbitrarily arrested thousands, subjecting many of them to brutal torture in detention. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has strongly criticized Syria’s government actions, calling them an “outright disregard for basic human rights.”

In addition, Pillay states, “[the government’s] resort to lethal or excessive force against peaceful demonstrators not only violates fundamental human rights, including the right to life, but serves to exacerbate tensions and tends to breed a culture of violence.” As a response, Syria’s deputy foreign minister accused Western powers of seeking a return to the “colonial era” by initiating action against his country at the UN.

In an unusual move, UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, called on Syria to investigate report of “horrific acts” of violence against children detained during the current wave of unrest in the country. According to UNICEF, the use of live ammunition against demonstrators had reportedly killed at least 30 children, although it said it could not independently confirm that figure or circumstances of their death.

UNICEF stated that it was “particularly disturbed by the recent video images of children who were arbitrarily detained and suffered torture or ill-treatment during their detention leading in some cases to their death.

One of those children, Hamza al-Kateeb, whose case has drawn strong international condemnation against the actions of the Bashar regime, may become the iconic figure the protest movement needs to help overthrow this vicious regime.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.

With Messi’s performance against Manchester United still fresh in soccer fans’ minds, an inevitable question rises again: Who is a better soccer player, Messi or Maradona at their best? To answer that question it might be useful to seek help from a Greek oracle, since both are, or were, in Maradona’s case, exquisite players. Or perhaps -as the saying goes- only time will tell.

Maradona came from the humblest of homes to become the most talked about soccer player of his generation. His two goals against the British team in the World Cup in Mexico City are now the stuff of legend. The first, the famous (or, more properly infamous since it was scored with the help of his hand,) became the now iconic “Hand of God” goal. For Maradona, it was revenge after Argentina’s defeat by the British in the Malvinas/Falklands war. Talking later about that goal he declared, “Not even the photographers managed to capture what really happened. And Shilton, [the British goalkeeper] jumping with his eyes shut, was outraged! I like this goal. I felt I was pick pocketing the English.”

His second goal, however, after he dribbled several opponents –including the goalkeeper- was considered by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) the best goal of the century.

In my native Argentina Maradona was revered, at least until he became the coach of the Argentine team in the last World Cup where Argentina lost to Germany in a dreadful performance. Maradona, who even has a religious movement named after him, The Church of Maradona, lost some of the prestige he had had until then.

Both Messi and Maradona share similar ways of playing. A great speed, a wonderful dribbling capacity as well as the capacity to send the ball to the best placed team mate. What is evident in Maradona, however, is his street urchin savvy. An Italian friend told me that when Maradona was playing for Napoli, during a game, while holding the ball he feigned that he was going to fall forwards. On seeing this, those from the opposing team that were closing on him moved slightly aside. What Maradona was doing, instead, was trying to see who was the best placed among his companions, sent him the ball and it was easy for his team mate to score. According to my friend, the Napoli fans went crazy with enthusiasm and for two minutes applauded Maradona.

In Napoli, Maradona is as revered as in Argentina and portraits of him are placed in many places in the city as if he were a saint, even placing candles under his figure. The Napoli soccer team never won as many championships as when Maradona was playing for it.

Cesar Luis Menotti, who managed the Argentine team that won the 1978 World Cup thus defined Maradona’s talent, “I am always cautious about using the word ‘genius’…The beauty of Diego’s game has a hereditary element –his natural ease with the ball- but it also owes a lot to his ability to learn: a lot of those brushstrokes, those strokes of ‘genius’, are in fact a product of his hard work. Diego worked hard to be the best.”

The physical characteristics of both players are similar; they are both short, sturdy, and have a demoniacal speed which allows them to easily overcome their opponents. Actually, Maradona’s goal of the century against the British team was rivaled, even in its minor details, by a wonderful goal Messi scored against the Spanish team Getafe in 2007.

But it is perhaps in their personal characteristics where one can find the real differences between them. While Messi is quiet, Maradona is boastful. While Maradona was a fighter against the world, Messi seems to have a natural timidity, even modesty.

They are both strategists and team players, and they are both highly technical with the ball, which seems attached with Velcro to their feet, only to be shot with force when circumstances are favorable. Who is the best, Messi or Maradona? The comparison is perhaps not fair. They are both equally talented, each a great player and both of them a glory to the game.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a New York-based writer.