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Silent night
By: David Sullivan, Enough, December 24, 2009 Bad things have a tendency to happen in faraway parts of the world during the holiday season, when policymakers head home and the 24hour news cycle momentarily slows down. Rebels and politicians alike know that they can get away with a lot when no one is paying attention. This is why Enough sounded the alarm about new threats by the LRA in northeast Congo, and we hope that the reinforcements deployed by the UN to that region can help protect civilians. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a quiet holiday this year? Read full article… |
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Des applications iPhone inaccessibles en Chine
By: Reporters Sans Frontiers, January 1, 2010 L’entreprise américaine Apple censurerait les applications proposées sur son iPhone en Chine d’après IDG News Service, le service d’informations de l’éditeur des publications spécialisées Macworld, PC World, Computerworld. Read full article…
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Rethinking education as the practice of freedom: Paulo Freire and the promise of critical pedagogy
By: Henry A. Giroux, Truth Out, January 3, 2010 Paulo Freire is one of the most important critical educators of the 20th century. Not only is he considered one of the founders of critical pedagogy, but he also played a crucial role in developing a highly successful literacy campaign in Brazil before the onslaught of the junta in 1964. His book, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” is considered one of the classic texts of critical pedagogy, and has sold over a million copies, influencing generations of teachers and intellectuals both in the United States and abroad. Read full article… Georgia: Looking back at the Rose Revolution
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By: Jeff Kisseloff, The Nation, December 4, 2009
When students at UCLA recently demonstrated against tuition hikes and as a result were treated like children and warned about the “limits of protest,” Jeff Kisseloff reports that his mind immediately raced back to October 1964 when officials at Berkeley expressed similar finger-wagging contempt for students who believed that the First Amendment didn’t end at the gates to the campus. Out of that sprung the Free Speech Movement, the first mass protest on a college campus since the 1930s.
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The revolution will be google-mapped
By: Shakthi Jothianandan, The Nation, December 1, 2009
Angus Johnston, historian, writer and diligent digital chronicler of American student activism, has up and taken to Google-mapping national student activism of the current 2009-2010 academic year. So far he’s highlighted a modest number of recent building occupations, demonstrations and strikes over a range of issues including tuition hikes, campus newspaper misogyny and resistance to administrative disciplinary tactics.
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Man unable to enter China languishes in Tokyo airport
By: John M. Glionna and Catherine Makino, LA Times, November 18, 2009
The Chinese pro-democracy magazine based in New York, has selected human rights lawyer, Feng Zhenghu, as the recipient of its annual “Freedom Pioneer” award. Well-known in China for his passionate defense of citizen’s rights, Feng has been at Terminal 1, in Tokyo’s Narita Airport, since November 4, when he was forcibly returned by Chinese authorities at Shanghai Airport as he tried to enter China. Feng has vowed to stay at the terminal in Tokyo until the Chinese government allows him to return home.
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Young people and activism: From the politics of loyalty to the politics of choice?
By: Pippa Norris, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, October 7, 2003
Many are concerned that there is widespread apathy, or even alienation, from the traditional modes of political participation in representative democracies, particularly among the young. To examine these issues, Part I of this report sets out the theoretical framework and the reasons why recent decades may have seen important generational shifts in common forms of politicalactivism, particularly in the repertoires and the agencies. Part II describes the source of evidence used to analyze age-related patterns of political activism, drawing upon the 15-nation European Social Survey, 2002 (ESS), and the methods used to disentangle generational, life-cycle, or period effects. Part III examines the age profile of activists using different repertoires, including voting, party work, demonstrations and consumer boycotts. Part IV analyzes membership in voluntary associations, exemplified by unions, churches and social clubs. The conclusion considers the implications of these results and whether we are experiencing a generational shift from the traditional politics of loyalties towards the contemporary politics of choice.
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