Cartoon film about life and creative work of Marc Chagall

clipped from www.youtube.com Cartoon Film about life and creative work of the great russian artist Marc Chagall. OST is Folk Jewish Music by Kristall-Balalayka Folk Band. clipped from www.youtube.com

Israel needs peacemakers not warhorses

clipped from onlinejournal.com Benjamin Netanyahu and his ideological ilk are Israel’s worst enemies. They arrogantly tout their nationalist credentials with propaganda, threats and, of course, military force. Their idea of a two-state solution comprises a demilitarised Gaza and West Bank shorn of occupied Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, the Judean Desert and existing Jewish colonies, with no control over its borders, airspace or shoreline. In other words, their version of Palestine would be a virtual open-air prison unable to defend itself; a toothless shell of a country ringed by Israeli missiles and tanks. Netanyahu is currently paying lip service to the creation of a Palestinian state as a direct result of US pressure, but up until June 2009 he characterised peace talks as a waste of time. In return for giving up occupied territory, Israel would receive international security guarantees, fixed borders, normal diplomatic relations with neighbours, an improved economy, and a forever Jewish state

U.S.A.: The far-right fringe: Armed, bigoted, and dangerous

clipped from onlinejournal.com Things have gotten really ugly in the Tea Party world. It was scary enough when some people showed up at town hall meetings last summer with loaded guns. But those seemed like isolated incidents. Now, however, even the unarmed Tea Partiers are resorting to more and more extreme displays of bigotry and hate. Over the weekend, tea partiers gathered outside the Capitol to protest the health care reform bill. Only this time they weren’t just hurling ill-informed talking points. This time they were hurling hate speech -- and worse. While a lot of this behavior is surely based on their mindless acceptance of the right-wing fear-inducing propaganda, I suspect it has even more to do with the fact that we now have a black man in the White House -- a black man with an exotic name in charge of this country. It scares the hell out of them. The problem is that some bigots can be very, very dangerous, especially when they are frightened. And that is even scarier than the fact that they can vote.

Tipps zum Umgang mit Cybermobbing

clipped from schau-hin.info Cybermobbing ist eine neue Form der Gewalt, bei der die Opfer mit Hilfe elektronischer Medien beleidigt, bloßgestellt und bedroht werden. Solche Belästigungen und Attacken können in sozialen Netzwerken, per E-Mail, Handy, Instant Messenger oder in virtuellen Internet-Chaträumen geschehen, indem beispielsweise peinliches Bildmaterial veröffentlicht oder beleidigende Gerüchte verbreitet werden. Im Internet erreicht Mobbing eine neue Dimension. SCHAU HIN! bietet umfangreiche Informationen über Cybermobbing für Eltern und Erziehende an.   In den SCHAU HIN! Tipps für Eltern von Cybermobbing Opfern finden Eltern Empfehlungen, wie Sie ihre Kinder unterstützen können. SCHAU HIN! bietet aber auch Tipps für Eltern, deren Kinder selbst zu Cybermobbing-Tätern geworden sind. Unsere Linkliste empfiehlt Angebote andere Initiativen und Projekte, die sich mit Mobbing im Netz beschäftigen.

Am 26. März 2010 strahlt KI.KA den Film „Netzangriff“ aus, in dessen Mittelpunkt Cybermobbing und seine Folgen stehen. Aus diesem Anlass bietet SCHAU HIN! ein umfangreiches Informationspaket an. Dazu gehören Tipps für Eltern zum Umgang mit Cybermobbing, Interviews, ein Expertenchat und weiterführende Links.

USA: Health care reform re-authorizes the failed abstinence-only-until-marriage initiative

This morning, President Obama made history by signing health care reform into law. While there are many things in the legislation that will benefit young people — including $75 million for evidence-based sex education programs — the bill also re-authorizes the failed abstinence-only-until-marriage initiative referred to as Title V. There is simply no reason that funding for these ineffective programs should have been included in health care reform. Three things remain shockingly clear:

1. These programs still do not work. An eight-year evaluation funded by Congress demonstrated that these programs have "no impact on teen behavior."
2. Abstinence-only programs put the health and lives of young people at risk by censoring critical health information about contraception and condoms and violate the rights of all young people to honest, accurate, and complete information.
3. Taxpayers will be forced to foot the bill for $250 million in wasted spending over five years, making a mockery of conservative Democrats' claims that they want to cut spending or reduce the deficit.

This was not a calculated compromise to get extra votes. There was no public pretense that these programs would improve the health of America's youth. Congressional leaders had any number of opportunities to simply remove abstinence-only funding from the final bill. [...] Health care reform is indeed an historic step forward, and this new law includes many provisions that will benefit young people in the years to come (by expanding Medicaid and extending young people's coverage under parental insurance, to name just two examples). This bill should never have included provisions that trample on the rights of the very people it was designed to help. Advocates for Youth intends to mount a grassroots campaign that will hold politicians accountable for denying young people the right to honest, accurate sex education.

Source: advocatesforyouth.org newsletter, 2010-03-23

A cluster of good news

clipped from blogs.amnesty.org.uk The Convention on Cluster Munitions – which bans the production, stockpiling, use and export of cluster bombs – marks a landmark victory for civil society campaigners. Cluster bombs were once a preferred weapon in many wars for the fact that it can be dropped from afar and little munitions – or bomblets – are scattered wide and far and so can have devastating impact across a huge area.   Hundreds of NGOs, including Amnesty have supported the worldwide campaign to abolish the use of this weapon.  In December 2008, 92 countries agreed to sign up to the Treaty but it couldn’t be effective until at least 30 states had ratified it. Thanks to Burkina Faso and Moldova – this treaty will soon become effective, and hopefully this will significantly reduce the number of deaths and devastating injuries that occur in conflict zones as a result of unexploded munitions from these weapons.

The international cluster munitions treaty: see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8519360.stm

James McCullough: Reflections on the Music of Anton Bruckner

clipped from www.bruckner.org If the spirit of Protestantism finds superlative musical expression in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, then perhaps the same claim could be made for the spirit of Catholicism in the music of Josef Anton Bruckner (1824-1896). Though not as popularly celebrated as his German predecessor, the music of Bruckner is equally sincere and just as moving in its evocation of Christian spirituality. And just as Bach’s music is able to transcend its historical context, so too the music of Bruckner, though located in a particular time and reflective of the aesthetic trends of its moment, continues to speak in a relevant and inspiring manner. It is often said that Anton Bruckner’s symphonies are like cathedrals of sound. Like a great cathedral, Bruckner’s music irresistibly eventuates in only one direction – up.

PALME - Präventives Elterntraining für alleinerziehende Mütter

clipped from www.dgpm.de PALME ist ein Elterntraining für Mütter und ihre Kinder, das sich vor allem an psychosozial belastete alleinerziehende Mütter mit Kindern im Vorschul- und Grundschulalter richtet. Die emotionszentrierten und interaktionsbezogenen 20 Gruppensitzungen werden von geschulten Erzieherinnen und Erziehern paarweise geleitet. Das bindungstheoretisch fundierte Konzept und die didaktische Aufbereitung von PALME wurden in Zusammenarbeit von Ärzten, Psychologen und Erzieherinnen entwickelt, erprobt und wissenschaftlich evaluiert. Die Wirksamkeit von PALME hinsichtlich Wohlbefinden der Mütter, Verhalten der Kinder und deutlicher Besserung der überdurchschnittlich stark ausgeprägten Depressivität alleinerziehender Mütter sind statistisch belegt. Besonderer Wert wird auf eine affektzentrierte Wahrnehmung des Gruppengeschehens und die emotionale Einstellung der Mutter sich selbst und auch dem Kind gegenüber gelegt.

Eine konflikthafte Abwesenheit des einen und eine strukturelle Überforderung des anderen Elternteils teilen sich vielen Kindern in Einelternfamilien mit und bewirken bei ihnen in Kindergärten und Schulen dann überdurchschnittlich häufig Anpassungsprobleme. Alle Einflüsse, welche die zuverlässige und feinfühlige Beziehungsaufnahme der Mutter zu ihrem Kind beeinträchtigen, können langfristig einen negativen Einfluss auf dessen seelische Entwicklung sowie die sozialen und schulischen Fähigkeiten ausüben. Dies gilt besonders, wenn keine Schutzfaktoren - wie z. B. eine weitere emotional positiv eingestellte und zuverlässig verfügbare Bezugsperson für das Kind - vorhanden sind. Beispielsweise sind seelisch belastete Mütter oder Mütter in schweren Partnerschaftskrisen in ihrer emotionalen Zuwendungsfähigkeit eingeschränkt und dann häufig selber unterstützungsbedürftig. http://www.palme-elterntraining.de/index.html

Jewish-Palestinian Peace Links

clipped from traubman.igc.org   Abraham's Vision Ada Aharoni's Home Page  All for Peace radio    All Nations Cafe    Arab-Jewish Dialogue Group of Silicon Valley (Calif.)   Beyond Words Camps that support the Middle East public peace process  Chefs for Peace  Compassionate Listening Project    Crossing Borders   Encounter - Musadafa - Encuentro - Mifgash (EMEM)   Givat Haviva  Hagar School   Hand in Hand: The Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel   HeartBeat Jerusalem Hope Flowers School   IPCRI   Interfaith Encounter Association   Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Transformation network -- IPCTnet    JustVision   mepeace.org    MidEast Web  Open House   The Palestine Center for Conflict Resolution & Reconciliation The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People - Beit Sahour    The Palestinian-Israeli Environmental Secretariat  Peace Child Israel   PeaceNow in Israel   Potlucks For Peace    San Diego (Calif.) Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue    Seeds of Peace   WINDOWS: Channels for Communication  ZEITOUNA Arab-Jewish Women's Dialogue

Sandro Botticelli's Mystic Nativity (1501), cosmologically modelled

clipped from crossings.tcd.ie An idea based on the same visual model inspired Sandro Botticelli's Mystic Nativity (1500, National Gallery, London), in which he represented the skyline in the background with an elliptical line converging at the centre, which delimits the base of a hemispherical sky vault [Figure 5]. This Ptolemaic cosmological vault looks naturalistic, with an everyday sky, under which we find the Holy Family. Renaissance painters used an analogical iconic system with dramatic realism based on a scientific knowledge of vision, light and perspective. On the one hand, the representation of perspective had a scientific confirmation, and it introduced the possibility of rendering the Platonic-Christian conception of the cosmos with a Ptolemaic elliptical vault. On the other hand, realism and strong analogy augmented with iconic representations were demonstrating that the laws of vision and the Platonic conception could be fused together and serve as the interpretation keys to the world. clipped from teachers.sduhsd.k12.ca.us

Visual thinking has a long tradition. Today, however, access to general information on the Internet largely requires the use of textual language. We have developed a computer program that combines artistic and technological considerations to help visual thinkers use standard search engines to find information. Called the Etruscan Room, the program adopts a metaphor for its design that goes back to a pre-Roman era. However, it also incorporates philosophical ideas exemplified by Renaissance painters. The program may be of interest not only to artists and technologists, but also to people who are unable to type or who have difficulty formulating textual queries because of aphasia.

Shtrek tsu mir dayn vayse hant

clipped from www.youtube.com Song "Unter dayne vayse shtern" performed by Chava Alberstein "Under your white stars", a prayer-lyric, written by Israeli-Yiddish poet Abraham Sutskever, the bard of the Vilna Ghetto. Unter dayne vayse shtern / Shtrek tsu mir dayn vayse hant / Mayne verter zaynen trern / viln ruen in dayn hant / Ze, es tunklt zeyer finkl / In mayn kelerdikn blik / Un ikh hob gornit kayn vinkl / Zey tsu shenken dir tsurik / Un ikh vil dokh, got getrayer / Dir fartroyen mayn farmeg / Vayl es mogt in mir a fayer / Un in fayer mayne teg / Nor in kelern un lekher / Veynt di merderishe ru / Loyf ikh hekher, iber dekher / Un ikh zukh, vu bistu, vu? / Nemen yogn mikh meshune / Trep un hoyfn mit gevoy / Heng ikh a geplatste strune / Un ikh zing tsu dir azoy / Unter dayne vayse shtern / Shtrek tsu mir dayn vayse hant / Mayne verter zaynen trern / viln ruen in dayn hant / Ze, es tunklt zeyer finkl / In mayn kelerdikn blik / Un ikh hob gornit kayn vinkl / Zey tsu shenken dir tsurik

Under your white stars
give me your white hand
my words turn into tears,
receive them in your hand.
When it becomes night
let the stars light up
the dept of my glance
so I find quiet in the darkness,
allow you to weep again.
Only you hear what I ask,
you know my pain.
Look at this fire, this I carry
it burns in my heart.
In the cellars, in the dungeons
the freedom is in the death.
On the houses, on the roofs
I shout: "Where are You, God?"
Restless I look for You,
chased by death.
Only for this song I allow me a pause,
and I sing for You, oh God.

Stunning Time-Lapse of the Milky Way

clipped from www.mymodernmet.com Best Viewed in Fullscreen Haven't had the time to do any stargazing in awhile? This time-lapse video by Charles Leung gives us a stunning look at the Milky Way from Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Really impressive, considering it's his first time-lapse video. Great job, Charles!

Nick Egnatz: Leave no one behind

clipped from onlinejournal.com Socialism at its heart is simply the commitment not to leave any member of society behind. Laid bare, capitalism allows the strongest and most conniving to leave the maximum number of their fellow citizens not just behind, but battered and broken. It is cruelly ironic that a country which takes such great pride in being a predominately Christian nation has at its core an economic system which is the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus. Also ironic is the fact that a nation which revels in the belief that these same soldiers that are being sent halfway around the world to wreak the mayhem of U.S. Empire, are doing so purportedly to protect our freedoms. Yet the very freedom of speech, they are allegedly protecting, does not allow for the public airing of a rational debate on the pros and cons of socialism and capitalism. the only hopes for change are nonviolent mobilization and demands made from outside the elite-controlled electoral process.

Nick Egnatz is a Vietnam veteran and member of Veterans For Peace. He has been actively protesting our government’s crimes of empire in both person and print for some years now and was named “Citizen of the Year” for Northwest Indiana in 2006 for his peace activism by the National Association of Social Workers.

W. Stefan Geoffrey: Neodeconstructive construction, capitalism and capitalist capitalism

clipped from www.elsewhere.org “Society is intrinsically unattainable,” says Foucault. The characteristic theme of Hamburger’s[2] essay on the postcultural paradigm of expression is not sublimation, but presublimation. Therefore, several discourses concerning neodeconstructive construction exist. If precapitalist deconstructive theory holds, we have to choose between the postcultural paradigm of expression and subconceptualist theory. It could be said that several narratives concerning cultural theory exist. Debord suggests the use of the neosemiotic paradigm of consensus to challenge the status quo. In a sense, Foucault uses the term ‘neodeconstructive construction’ to denote not narrative per se, but subnarrative. Derrida promotes the use of capitalist conceptualism to read sexual identity. Therefore, an abundance of discourses concerning a self-justifying whole may be found. Debord uses the term ‘the postcultural paradigm of expression’ to denote the dialectic, and eventually the fatal flaw, of postcultural society.

As everybody knows, the author is an emerited member of the Department of Peace Studies, University of Massachusetts.

Water is life; deliberate denial of water is terror

clipped from www.amnesty.org.uk Thousands of Palestinian men, women and children are being denied access to the water they need by the Israeli authorities. Unable to grow crops or feed their herds, Palestinian villagers are struggling to survive. In many areas, access to water is so severely restricted that they can't even grow small amounts of food to feed their families. It's a life-threatening situation. Israeli troops have destroyed rainwater cisterns and frequently confiscate water tankers, tractors and trailers used by Palestinians attempting to collect water from further away. By denying Palestinians water, the Israeli authorities are denying them life. 'Why must they destroy the little we have? What harm have we done by cultivating this small bit of land, so that we can feed our children? ... Why so much cruelty to human beings, to the land, to nature?' Samar Da'ish, a farmer's wife. Amnesty is committed to ending the illegal and discriminatory policy that is threatening so many lives.

Sammlung von Telekommunikationsdaten in ihrer jetzigen Form verfassungswidrig

clipped from www.zeit.de Die Massenspeicherung von Telefon- und Internetdaten zur Strafverfolgung ist in ihrer jetzigen Form unzulässig. Sie ist dem Urteil der Verfassungsrichter zufolge mit dem Telekommunikationsgeheimnis unvereinbar. Die bisher erhobenen Daten seien unverzüglich zu löschen, verkündeten die Richter in Karlsruhe. Das Gesetz wahrt aus ihrer Sicht nicht den Grundsatz der Verhältnismäßigkeit. Außerdem mangele es an einer Sicherheit für die Daten und es gebe keine konkreten Angaben, wofür die Daten gebraucht werden sollen. Ferner kritisierten die Richter die mangelnde Transparenz des Gesetzes. Das Karlsruher Urteil schließt eine Speicherung der Daten jedoch nicht generell aus. Die deutschen Verfassungsrichter stellten nicht die Zulässigkeit der EU-Richtlinie infrage, die Grundlage für das Gesetz in Deutschland ist.