Change in Thailand

[the_future_modernes]

THAILAND:Red Shirts Reappear Ahead of Poll

BANGKOK, May 21, 2011 (IPS) - Thailand faces a new phenomenon on the road leading to the Jul. 3 polls: an informal union between a strong opposition political party and a formidable street protest movement that may reshape this year’s political campaign.

"This is a first in Thai history," said Pitch Pongsawat, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. "We have not seen such a fusion of a street protest movement and mainstream politics during an election campaign.

"They have grown larger and stronger and more determined," Pitch told IPS, describing the anti- government ‘Red Shirt’ protesters who have been challenging this South-east Asian kingdom’s conservative political establishment since they made their presence felt in 2008. "These people will never give up their fight for truth and justice."

Signs of this new alliance were visible on May 19. The day began with 26 political parties registering their candidates for the poll, yet ended in the evening on a different note: the return to the streets of the Red Shirts, who enjoy wide support among the country’s urban and rural working class.

It was more than a coincidence that thousands of protesters, wearing their signature red shirts, held a rally at a junction in the heart of an upscale shopping area in Bangkok that night.

May 19 marked the first year anniversary of a bloody showdown, when Thai troops moved in to reclaim the streets at the Ratchaprasong intersection that the Red Shirts had taken over in mid-April 2010. This ritzy neighbourhood, boasting five-star hotels and shopping malls with designer clothing shops, had been converted into a Red Shirt protest site for weeks. MORE

on the 1966 genocide of the Igbo of Nigeria

[the_future_modernes]

xposted

The most tragic day of Igbo history: 29 May 1966

29 May 1966, the Igbo Day of Affirmation, marks both the start of the 1966 genocide against the Igbo people and the day they decided to survive the violence unleashed against them, writes Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe.\

For the Igbo, prior to 29 May 1966, three important holidays were high up on their annual calendar: The Igbo National Day, the iri ji, or the New Yam Festival, and 1 October. The latter was the day of celebration for the restoration of independence for peoples in Nigeria after 60 years of the British conquest and occupation. Or, so were the thoughts predicated on this date’s designation.

ORIGINS

The Igbo were one of the very few constituent nations in what was Nigeria, again prior to 29 May 1966, who understood, fully, the immense liberatory possibilities ushered in by 1 October and the interlocking challenges of the vast reconstructionary work required for state and societal transformation in the aftermath of foreign occupation.

The Igbo had the most robust economy in the country in their east regional homeland. Not only did they supply the country with its leading writers, artists and scholars, they also supplied the country’s top universities with vice-chancellors and leading professors and scientists. They supplied the country with its first indigenous university (the prestigious university at Nsukka), with its leading and most spirited pan-Africanists and its top diplomats. They supplied the country’s leading high schools with head teachers and administrators, supplied the country with its top bureaucrats, supplied the country with its leading businesspeople and supplied the country with an educated, top-rated professional officers-corps for its military and police forces. In addition they supplied the country with its leading sportspersons, essentially and effectively worked the country’s rail, postal, telegraphic, power, shipping and aviation services to quality standards not seen since in Nigeria MORE

on pastorialism and its place in the modern economy of Ethiopia

[the_future_modernes]

Ethiopia: Meles Zenawi’s subterfuge on pastoralism
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi needs to seriously rethink his ideas around the ‘backwardness’ of pastoralism and the need for ‘modernity’, argues Abebech Belachew.

On 25 January 1998, an Ethiopian NGO working on pastoral development, Pastoralist Concern Association of Ethiopia (PCAE), organised a mass cultural gathering in a place called Filtu, Ogaden, for the pastoral communities in the surrounding area. At the end of the gathering, the pastoral elders resolved that 25 January should be observed every year as the pastoralist day. In 2000, when the Pastorlaist Forum Ethiopia (PFE), a national network of NGOs and of which PCAE is a member, was formed, the responsibility of organising the pastoralist day was passed over to the PFE. Thereafter, all the Ethiopian Pastoralist Days had been organised by PFE, until 2005 when the government of il duce (Meles) nationalised it and made it its own. On that year, the PFE was completely thrown out of the management and Meles started to appear for the first time. From then on, the Ethiopian Pastoralist Day became the occasion through which the regime uses as a propaganda tool to deceive pastoral communities. Let’s now turn to what Meles said in Jinka on 25 January. It should be noted that it is not just Meles Zenawi but a great many Ethiopians, and Africans at large for that matter, who do not understand pastoralism or who do not have the right perception on pastoralism. On the contrary, pastoralism is understood by many Ethiopians in the negative sense, as backward and barbaric. Hence, a brief introduction is required right from the outset.[3]

Pastoralism is, in the first place, a traditional way of life whose livelihood system is ingrained in the livestock production. In the same manner as small-scale farming is a traditional livelihood system to the peasantry, livestock production is also the livelihood system of pastoral communities. There are an estimated 50 million pastoralists spread throughout Africa from Senegal and Mauritania in the west to Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, and to the San people of southern Africa (Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa). In some countries, pastoralists constitute a majority and some countries are predominantly pastoral by origin. Sudan, Djibouti and Somalia are 100 per cent pastoral by origin. Pastoralists constitute one huge section of the population in the continent.MORE

Tell the Italian Government that Sign is a language!

[trouble]

Italy is attempting to declare that Italian Sign Language is a language of "mime & gesture". Foolish Deaf people, thinking they use a language! /sarcasm

( Video, Transcript below )

( Transcript )

Petition Link

FB Page for "LIS: Si - LMG: No"

Another Vlog Explanation in ASL

Another Vlog Explanation in International Sign

Another Vlog Explanation in LIS

Wikipedia Article About LIS

Vlog Explanations in *MANY* Signed Languages

English Language petition at Changes.org

I found out about this via @Deaf on Twitter.

Folks, the Conference of Milan in 1881 basically declared Sign not a language and banned its use in the classroom. Eighteen Eighty One. The people who held the vote were the hearing teachers at Deaf residential schools. Deaf teachers weren't allowed to vote. It's 2011, and people are still refusing to allow Deaf people to define their language and experiences, or to speak for themselves. Many hearing people still act like Sign Languages are just random gestures and mime. It took a hearing man, William Stokoe, writing an academic paper in the 1960s before ASL was believed to be a language in the United States, despite the fact that ASL had been in regular use as a language for decades.

Gestures & Mime? No, this is a language and what we call these things matters.

Crossposted.