I'll Draw You Anything
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I'll Draw You Anything

By Dawn Hedrick

I'll Draw You Anything
I'll draw you a cross,
To replace what you lost,
Though it won't speak to you, dear.
I'll draw you a thorn,
And though you feel folorn,
This thorn will chase away your fears.
I'll draw you a knife,
To take away all of your strife,
It'll cut away the wool in your eyes.
I'll draw you a bird,
To add to your mirth,
Watch it fly through the skies!
I'll draw you a sword,
And swear on the lord,
It'll protect you from harm.
I'll draw you a heart,
To keep you from tearing apart,
And keep you in the comfort of my arms.

(The poem appeared on poemhunter.com)
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Creative Commons License
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Gilad Benari
photographer gilad benari, drawing by ben heine
Photographer Gilad Benari, drawing by ben heine

Gilad Benari is a talented photographer (conceptual artist more precisely) and poet. He is a big inspiration for me and for my evolution as a photographer. With his astounding photos, he lets us see the simple elements of our world in a different and beautiful way.

Gilad says: "I love to vary my experience in photography. I believe that the real joy in photography is in the trivial, in small things".

Gilad comes from Israel (Tel Aviv). The good thing with his photos is that they show another side of his country, often criticized because of it's offensive policy towards Palestine.

He explains: "Israel suffers an image of being a desert land, or simply a war zone, when showing it all over the world news. Being a photographer and a writer, I have a chance to show otherwise."

See his website,
his Deviant Art page
,
and
his Flick'r page.
Gilad can be contacted at :
giladbenari@walla.com

Below are some of my favorite
photos by him (click to enlarge) :

Tel Aviv Dance
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Tall City

Azrieli Center
Two Burning Matches
Between Earth and Sky
One Day
Window of Opportunity
Clouds Factory

All above photos :
© Copyrights Gilad Benari

* * *
Narcissus, Photographer

By Erica Jong

Mirror-mad,
he photographed reflections:
sunstorms in puddles,
cities in canals,

double portraits framed
in sunglasses,
the fat phantoms who dance
on the flanks of cars.

Nothing caught his eye
unless it bent
or glistered
over something else.

He trapped clouds in bottles
the way kids
trap grasshoppers.
Then one misty day

he was stopped
by the windshield.
Behind him,
an avenue of trees,

before him,
the mirror of that scene.
He seemed to enter
what, in fact, he left.

(The poem appeared on ericajong.com)

Creative Commons License
Marcel Marceau's Portrait : Cartoon
of the Week on Don Quichotte
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(click on images)
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The Poorest of the Poor...
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Ending Extreme Poverty,
Improving the Human Condition

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By M. J. Friedrich
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Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger is an ambitious goal, to say the least. But this is the aim of the UN (United Nations) Millennium Project, a global plan to meet a set of 8 targets to improve the human condition. These targets, called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), include halving, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on $1 a day.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, PhD, developed the plan for the UN Millennium Project and served as its director and as Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, from 2002 to 2006. His plan is being studied in several villages in 10 African countries through the UN Millennium Villages Project, which seeks to help people transform their lives through tools and interventions that promote clean water, sanitation and other essential infrastructure, education, food production, basic health care, and environmental sustainability.

Sachs has served as an international economic advisor throughout the world and has helped address the economic, political, environmental, and social challenges of some of the poorest regions, work that he detailed in his bestselling book, The End of Poverty. He is currently the director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, which describes its mission as helping to "achieve sustainable development primarily by expanding the world's understanding of Earth as one integrated system."

In a recent interview with JAMA, Sachs discussed his thoughts on these issues and the progress being made toward eradicating poverty.

JAMA: Those living in extreme poverty are the "poorest of the poor." How many people are believed to be living in this condition?

Dr Sachs: The World Bank technically describes extreme poverty as a person who lives under $1 a day. In my opinion, a better definition is the inability to meet basic needs, such as adequate nutrition, access to safe water, access to basic education, having a livelihood that can generate an income to meet these basic needs, and access to primary health services. By either definition about 1 billion people live in extreme poverty.

This number, determined mainly by household survey, is a pretty rough estimate. It's an area where a major effort could and should be made, but of course this is not the only area where we underinvest in the poor. When the world is capable of leaving millions of people to die for lack of access to the most basic things, it's also capable of not making the effort to measure [their numbers], as well.

JAMA: What are some of the specific challenges that poor countries face in trying to improve conditions, such as providing primary health services?

Dr Sachs: In most of tropical Africa, about 75% of the population lives in villages, in rural areas, as subsistence farmers. These communities typically lack so much that is basic—electricity, running water, nearby clinics, public transport. The basics used for malaria control, such as bed nets, are lacking. There may be 5 doctors per 100 000 people—or no doctors at all.

The challenges in these places are to build a basic health structure almost from scratch. This has to be addressed systematically. This challenge of scaling up basic health services is the core challenge of public health.

JAMA: What steps can be taken to begin scaling up health services?

Dr Sachs: A lot can be done, perhaps surprisingly. First, it's possible to build clinics at very low cost; physical construction is simply not a problem. Getting the drug supplies for the basic medicines—the antibiotics, the antimalarials—is really not a problem if we put our mind to it, and some countries have been able to do a wonderful job in a short period of time.

Often a significant number of nurses and post–secondary-trained clinical officers are available who can do a tremendous amount of things to treat the basic disease conditions, meaning that more doctors aren't required. We can train community health workers—meaning 1 year of training after secondary school—to reach out to households to monitor, to help households get to clinics or local hospitals. This can make a phenomenal difference.

We also now have cell phone coverage, wireless Internet coverage, and the potential for transport to create an emergency response system. This is something I’m trying to promote in the villages in Africa where we're working. We have connectivity and communications that make it possible—even in a very poor setting—to create an emergency response and referral system from a local clinic to a hospital.

If we can bring these powerful technologies to bear they can make a very large difference. It still won't be the comprehensive quality health system one would like, but it can sharply reduce the enormous disease burden.

In addition, there is a mass chemotherapy approach being introduced in a number of countries to treat or prevent tropical parasites such as schistosomiasis. Drug companies are ready to partner with the poorest countries to bring down the burden of these parasites.

JAMA: Can you describe 1 or 2 examples of successes in which a region adopted a program to improve health?

Dr Sachs: In low-income settings, a great deal of the disease burden results from a small number of conditions—infection, undernourishment, and unsafe childbirth—for both the mother and the neonate. Countries that have introduced primary health care to address these 3 main categories of disease burden have been able to do very well.

Campaigns of immunization, control of vector-borne diseases like malaria, fluoridation, iodinization of salt, vitamin A, deworming, and school feeding programs are all examples of basic interventions that can be applied on a population scale that can dramatically reduce the burden of disease.

Throughout the Americas there have been big successes. These countries are not utterly impoverished and the government has been able to afford to introduce basic primary health care. The results are astounding. The mortality rates of children under the age of 5 years can come down from 150 or 200 deaths per 1000 to 20 to 30 in a relatively short period of time.

Successes have been widespread in Asia and Latin America and other parts of the developing world, with the really crucial exception being sub-Saharan Africa and war-torn places like Afghanistan and Iraq, which stand out as having absolutely horrendous rates of mortality still—not only because of the violence, but because of the complete breakdown of public health systems.

JAMA: Can you provide an example of a failed health program that taught an important lesson—one that didn't take off but that you learned something from?

Dr Sachs: There are a couple different kinds of lessons. One is that rising incomes don't necessarily address health conditions. Simply being aware of the problem isn't enough. What is needed are specific targeted interventions, clinics and hospitals. So many lower-middle–income countries such as those in Central America that have public health systems still have high maternal mortality rates because the system hasn't made the effort to improve the safety of birth.

Another kind of failure is that of rich countries that fail to recognize what can be done to save lives and improve health conditions among the poor. The most glaring failure is malaria, with about half a billion clinical cases and between 1 million and 3 million deaths each year.

Malaria is largely preventable by simple technologies such as insecticide-treated bed nets and treatable by appropriate first-line medicines. Yet in many cases, the medicines don't get to the children in time and they die. The US championed what's called social marketing of bed nets, meaning that the bed nets are sold at discounted prices. Although only a dollar or two, many people simply can't afford this.

This is perhaps the most dramatic example of where we’ve failed miserably to act with some basic decency to address the problem. It's a shocking part of modern neglect that I hope is coming to an end.

JAMA: How do you evaluate and measure the success of programs in the face of variables such as unexpected political, environmental, and medical events?

Dr Sachs: Often evaluation and data collection and feedback are simply not built appropriately into these systems. And yet with the advent of the Internet and cell phones and computer servers that can automatically register public health information from community health workers, we should be able to do a much better job of monitoring disease surveillance and evaluation of programs.

In our own work in Millennium Villages, we weren't collecting much of the critical information needed to ensure properly functioning health care—we were building clinics and getting training going and so forth. But now we're getting reliable vital statistics information month by month and will pursue that in much greater detail.

The information systems we have can be used not only to evaluate the programs but to help the health system to function. These technologies are going to prove to be incredibly powerful in this area and in many other areas of development.

JAMA: Money is a big issue. You’ve talked about a global compact between rich and poor countries—the responsibility of rich countries to contribute monetary assistance and the responsibility of poor countries to be ready for change. Can you comment on this?

Dr Sachs: Many countries already have clear, ambitious programs for development. Most of these countries, however, are too poor to finance the investments on their own.

This financial gap is where we come in. Malawi, for example, can maybe spend $8 to $10 per capita on its health system. But it's not going to reach the $40 to $50 needed for an even rudimentary system. Malawi will get out of poverty over time, but not all at once and not if these disease burdens remain as high as they are.

I don't accept that we don't have the money to do it. We can decide to allocate a tenth of 1% of our income to make it possible to save millions of lives every year—and I believe firmly that we should be doing that for our own well-being as well as for the lives that we save.

JAMA: You believe that extreme poverty can be eradicated by 2025. How do you respond to critics who say you're too optimistic?

Dr Sachs: The first thing I say is stop criticizing and come up with solutions.

The tools for change are very powerful. We just have to decide to use them against these problems that deserve our attention.

--------------------------

--> This interview appeared on jama.ama-assn.org
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Creative Commons License
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Stars - Portraits
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Click on image above
to see my new gallery
of famous people on
Stars-Portraits
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Warm thanks to
Camille Le Roux
for inviting me !
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Don Quichotte Cartoon Committee's
Conclusions on the issue :
"Similarity Between Cartoons"

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Please click on image to enlarge
and read the full statement

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Erdogan Karayel
Cartoons

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Click on the image below to view
recent cartoons by Erdogan Karayel (*)
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(*) Erdogan Karayel was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1956. He studied art at the Marmara University in Istanbul, where he graduated in 1982. He started his professional comics’ career in 1977, when his work was published in Turkish magazines Carsaf, Ses and Girgir. Several albums of his work appeared, such as 'Renk-Leke-Cizgi', 'En Gurbettekiler, Bir warmis Bir Yokmus', 'Hans and Hasan' and 'Siyahbeyazofkelerim'. He had many exhibitions of his work and received several awards.

Erdogan Karayel is a "Peace warrior" and his only weapon is the cartoon. He is also the editor in chief of the Turkish-German cartoon magazine Don Quichotte.

--> More on Erdogan Karayel and Don Quichotte
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Child Of The Universe
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I dedicate this drawing to my
good friend Marcin Bondarowicz

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Child Of The Universe

By L. C. Brown

The universe exploded,
A piece became the earth.
I rode in on a meteor,
Its crash was my birth.
Lava took me for a ride,
To cool in the sea.
I waited for millions of years,
For nature to use me.
I became a child of the universe,
With no place to go.
Then God gave life a meaning,
That's how I got my soul.
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(The poem appeared on poemhunter.com)
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Creative Commons License
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Che Guevara,
The Legend

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Che - Hero or Tyrant?


By Nima Elbagir

The legacy of Che Guevara 40 years on - is this the voice of liberation or tyranny?

He's one of Cuba's leading heroes of the revolution - and a global icon of rebellion whose image is paraded on T-shirts, posters and walls across the world. This week marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara - who fought alongside Fidel Castro during the Cuban revolution. On the eve of commemorations Nima Elbagir asks whether his hold on the left is still as strong as it was four decades ago.

The formative years of a revolutionary guerrilla

Che was born Ernesto Guevara de la Serna to a middle class family in Roasario, Argentina, on 14 June 1928.

He studied Medicine at Buenos Aires University. Whilst a student, he travelled extensively through South and Central America - journeys which he writes about in The Motorcycle Diaries which was made into a film directed by Walter Salles.

The poverty and social and economic inequality he witnessed on his travels informed his Marxist political views and his eventual role as one of Cuba's revolutionary leaders.

Revolution with Fidel

It was in Mexico in 1956 that Guevara met Fidel Castro. He joined the future Cuban leader's revolutionary 26th July Movement, which in 1959 overthrew the regime of dictator General Fulgencio Batista in Cuba.

After the revolution Che became president of the National Bank of Cuba, and later the minister of industry. He travelled the world as an ambassador for Cuba and orchestrated land redistribution and the nationalisation of Cuba's industry.

Leaving Cuba

Cuba entered a difficult time as it positioned itself in opposition to the United States and in line with the Soviet Union. Che became distanced from the other Cuban leaders and in 1965 left Cuba to begin socialist revolutions elsewhere.

Che travelled to Africa, spending several months in the Congo training-up rebel forces in guerrilla warfare. His efforts proved unsuccessful and, just a year after leaving Cuba, Che returned - en route to Bolivia.

The end of the man, the beginning of the legend

In Bolivia Che led forces in a rebellion against the René Barrientos Ortuño government. But success would again elude him - and lead to his death.

The Bolivian army was assisted by the US in capturing Che. He was executed without trial on 9 October in 1967 in a village called La Higuera. His burial place was kept secret until 1997, when his remains were discovered, exhumed and returned to Cuba to be reburied.

Since his death, Che has become a revolutionary hero and an icon of Cuba thanks to Alberto Korda's black and white photo of him in beret. The image appears everywhere from Cuba's revolutionary square in Havanna and on Cuba's local currency, to t-shirts the world over worn sometimes as little more than a fashion statement.

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--> This article appeared on channel4.com
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Creative Commons License
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From Guevara to Chavez
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Pink Tide,
A Revolutionary Is Born Again

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By Rory Carroll and Lola Almudevar
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When the haggard and broken figure was laid out on the slab and displayed to the world it was not just Che Guevara that had died. The dream of socialist revolution in South America was over. His image and name would continue to inspire millions, but on the continent he wanted to transform he was a political failure, a defeated guerrilla on the wrong side of history.

Bolivia's peasants spurned Che's rebellion, leaving the Bolivian army and the CIA to capture him on October 8, 1967, kill him the following day, and rid South America of Cuba's revolutionary spirit. The soldiers reportedly drew straws to determine who would have the honour of shooting Che.

"And so he is dead," wrote the Guardian's Richard Gott, one of the few journalists at the scene that day. "As they pumped preservative into his half-naked, dirty body and as the crowd shouted to be allowed to see, it was difficult to recall that this man had once been one of the great figures of Latin America."

It was difficult to feel his ideas would die with him, Gott said. He was right. Forty years later the anniversary of the death is looming and the scene is transformed: the Cubans are back, socialism is back and Che is a hero.

Che's rehabilitation has been borne on the region's "pink tide" of left-wing governments, especially in Bolivia and Venezuela, where efforts are under way to promote socialism, deepen ties with Havana and roll back Washington's influence.

The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, echoes Che's desire to wean people off capitalism by moulding a "new socialist man". The Argentine-born rebel's writings have been widely distributed in Venezuela and a government-run work and training scheme was recently named after him. Chavez has devised an ambitious scheme that ships Venezuelan oil to Cuba in exchange for 20,000 medical personnel who offer free treatment to Venezuela's poor.

About 800 doctors have moved to Bolivia since its President, Evo Morales, an ally of Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro, was elected in 2005. Others are on their way to Ecuador now it has a socialist president, Rafael Correa. The scheme has widened so that poor patients from as far afield as Brazil, Chile and Nicaragua can fly to Venezuela and Cuba for free treatment.

"They have treated more than 120,000 [Bolivian] patients for free, without any conditions at all," Morales says. "What has Cuba asked of us? Have they asked to take ownership of a mine or to be partners in petrol? No."

Bolivia's President contrasted that with US aid, which he said came with strings, such as concessions for corporations that would perpetuate the neo-liberal economics, which he blames for impoverishing the region. "One wants to subordinate and impose conditions, the other gives unconditional co-operation."

Che envisaged violent insurrections against South America's ruling elites as part of a global fight against US imperialism, with the war in Vietnam just one front. Even Castro was said to be taken aback at his vehemence.

What Che would make of socialists who take power through elections rather than the gun no one can know. Not even Chavez, the reddest tinge in the pink tide, advocates communism. Nor is it certain the tide will endure. But there is no doubt it has swept Che back into political battle after decades when he was little more than a handsome face on countless T-shirts and posters.

His name still inspires loathing among those who attend anti-government protests in Bolivia and Venezuela. Che was an enthusiastic executioner of the revolution's opponents in Havana, they say, and his elevation to secular saint bodes ill for democracy in the Andes. "He was a bloodthirsty Marxist who died and failed for a good reason," says Ignacio Baretto, a from Caracas. "We don't need him back."

Momentum is with those who revere the guerrilla. Chavez, flush with oil money and popularity, is building what he calls "21st century socialism". Morales has nationalised the energy industry and is ploughing through heavy resistance to rewrite Bolivia's constitution. Both presidents openly scorn the US.

Analysts agree that Washington has hemorrhaged influence over a region once its backyard. The dispatch of a US navy hospital ship to treat the poor has been viewed as a belated, feeble reply to Cuba's doctor army.

"Che was fighting for dignified societies, where no one is in the street, where no one is exploited and where people have the same opportunities to study and live," says Loyola Guzman, a member of Bolivia's constituent assembly and one of the few remaining guerrillas who fought next to Guevara. "That is what we are fighting for now."
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President Chavez launches
Che Guevara Mission

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By Mathaba
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During a ceremony that takes place in the Theater Teresa Carreño this Thursday, President Hugo Chávez officially launched Che Guevara Mission.

The new mission was created to substitute Vuelvan Caras mission aimed at strengthening the training of the new man with a socialist view of life.

The Minister of People’s Power for Communal Economy, Pedro Morejon, said before attending the ceremony: ''In this phase, we will go to strengthen the revolutionary process by creating conscience, ethic and ideology with a socialist base to build a new social production.''

Last September 10th, the mission successfully started in all the Socialist Training Centers (CFS, by its Spanish abbreviation) of the country; about 40,000 people enrolled in the mission.

Members of the President Commission of Che Guevara Mission also attend the ceremony, among them: Minister of People’s Power for Education, Adan Chávez, Minister of People’s Power for Communal Economy, Pedro Morejón and Minister of People’s Power for Higher Education, Luis Acuña.

Ideological training and constitutional reform conferences are given in the CFS of the country in order to incorporate Ché Guevara Mission’s members in the building of socialism.

Translated by Natalia González

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--> The first article appeared on smh.com.au , the second on mathaba.net

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Uncle Che's Message
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40 Years After Death,
Che Lives On as Symbol of Rebellion


By Sify News

Ernesto "Che" Guevara lived fast, died young and left, if not a good-looking corpse, at least one full of mysticism. But the Argentine-born guerrilla fighter also left a legacy of ideals against injustice in Latin America and beyond, which turned him into a global icon, albeit one full of controversy. He remains a symbol 40 years after his death.

Che Guevara's image — particularly as it was immortalised in 1960 by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, wearing a beret with a single star and looking into the distance — is used around the world as a leftist fetish or just a symbol of juvenile rebelliousness. It adorns millions of T-shirts, flags, posters and key rings, and even the body in the form of tattoos like the one proudly worn by Argentine football legend Diego Maradona.

Aware of the impact of his image, those responsible for Guevara's death on October 9, 1967 in the Bolivian town of La Higuera hid his corpse, which remained missing for 30 years. But that only made Che's legend grow. "For the radical left, the fetish of Che means a cultural victory after a political defeat," Cuban essayist Ivan de la Nuez noted in a recent article.

Communist Cuba has watched almost with satisfaction the commercial success of its great figure, despite the paradox that, in so doing, it is giving its consent to the mercantilist practices that Che criticised so much.

The island is full of murals and posters with the effigy of the "heroic fighter" or his most famous phrases, and street markets are full of Che merchandise — avidly bought not only by tourists but also by many enthusiastic Cubans. Cubans, however, are keen to point out that their sentiment is different.

"Here in Cuba whenever we have the chance to have a Che T-shirt we wear it with great affection and love and not because it is a fashionable object but because we really feel it," medicine student Yendri Gatorno said.

Che's grandson Canek Sanchez Guevara has repeatedly criticised a situation in which the fighter's figure is used by the state in Cuba "as symbolic, moral and ethical capital of the revolution and then as merchandise of the residues of the revolution". A majority of Cuban supporters of the revolution led by Fidel Castro would not agree.

"At the beginning it bothered me to see those symbols, but I realised that I was actually wrong, that nobody becomes a millionaire selling T-shirts," Alberto Granado — Che's friend from youth — said in a recent documentary.

"The presence of Che in T-shirts, for young people, is a way to bother their parents. Even those who did not know who Che was knew that his presence was a way to bother their parents, who have done nothing to achieve a better world. And symbols are also a way to show presence," Granado said.

For Veneranda Fe Garcia, the director of the Che Guevara Memorial in Santa Clara, Cuba, the sale of symbols of the fighter "is part of the impact that Che's figure has in the years in which young people see Che as an expression of rebelliousness, as a spirit of resistance, or of change, of transformation.

"Nobody is going to get rich with those images... All that which is for sale is there because behind it there are always people with different expressions, aspirations," she said. Forty years after Che's death, Cuba does not appear ready to stop exploiting the figure which, along with Fidel Castro, has most contributed to internationalise the ideals of revolutionary Cuba.

"We know that in other countries Che is used to market his figure and sell sweaters, T-shirts... We do not reject that policy because, one way or another, we are left with the joy that those people who have acquired the garments will some day feel more committed to Che," student Yendri said.
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(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
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--> This article appeared on Sifi News
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The Posing Model
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The Model

By Amera Andersen

The canvas caressed by the artists’ brush
I feel beauty as it begs to be born
The colours blend to a glorious flush
Labor of love like the rose and the thorn

I’m a working girl and availed for hire
I hold my pose with a floral bouquet
The stillness lends my soul to desire
as the clock hands wipe the hours away

Thoughts and desire keep my body still
Undressed, exposed to your critical eyes
I’m tempted to give myself to your will
To give you my heart and open my thighs

Yet I know you have no interest in me
I’m here for the art and critics to see

(The poem appeared on creative-poems.com)
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Marcel Marceau
Remembered
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Tu Vas Nous Manquer,
an Ode to Marcel Marceau

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By thepoetryman

As in silent motion
white faced petals
polish our living

nestled near, ready to rise
and outshine the sorrow
etched upon our face;
hate, that rusty nail
on the floor of hell piercing
the naked feet of our foul specter.

As in silent motion
dream’s painted face
fetches our melody…


Je dois y aller maintenant.
Adieu,

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
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* * *
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Mime Legend Marcel Marceau
passed away at 84
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Marcel Marceau, the master of mime who transformed silence into poetry with lithe gestures and pliant facial expressions that spoke to generations of young and old, has died. He was 84.

Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau breathed new life into an art that dates to ancient Greece. He played out the human comedy through his alter-ego Bip without ever uttering a word.

Offstage, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.

A French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp during World War II, unlike his father who died in Auschwitz. Marceau worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children, and later used the memories of his own life to feed his art.

He gave life to a wide spectrum of characters, from a peevish waiter to a lion tamer to an old woman knitting, and to the best-known Bip.
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* * *
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Marcel Marceau Remembered
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Marcel Marceau, the legendary master of mime, died September 22 at age 84. Born Marcel Mangel to a Jewish family in Strasbourg, France, Marceau escaped the Nazis, joined the French Resistance and worked as a liaison to General Patton’s army. In 1946 he began studying acting in Paris, where he quickly established his career. The following excerpt was taken from a 2001 interview with Marceau by freelance journalist Jeremy Josephs:
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I was once asked about my “Jewish sensitivity,” to which I replied that I would prefer to discuss human sensitivity. Jews are sensitive, like other people, but in the modern world religion should not be so high up [in] the order of the day. I was brought up in a Jewish home, but I was brought up to be human, not fanatical, which is something that I don’t appreciate at all. I learned to become a humanist, and not to dwell on the differences between Jews and Christians.

I must be honest and tell you that I do feel slightly uncomfortable with people dwelling on this Jewish aspect of my life. I have the greatest respect for the sufferance of the Holocaust — my father died in Auschwitz — so I am perfectly well aware of what happened. But this did not make me superior to other people.

I don’t want to be part of a community. I want to be part of the world. I have never been a victim of antisemitism — if you put to one side my war-time experience. That said, I am lucky not to have been sent into a concentration camp. I produced false papers, I took Jewish children to Switzerland when I was a teenager… and [after the war] I went to drama school with Etienne Decroux. But I never denied that I was Jewish. I wanted to give my art to the people.

The memory of the Holocaust is so important though. The 20th century was the most criminal century. Despite this, it has been a great century too. There is a balance between good and evil. But I am happy that the memory of the Holocaust is kept alive, so that such a tragedy can never begin again. But I would not put a Jew who died in the Holocaust above a Catholic soldier who died in the trenches of the First World War. All wars are criminal.
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* * *
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Silence falls on Marcel Marceau,
master of the mime

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By John Lichfield

When great actors die, they are said to "fall silent". The mime artist Marcel Marceau had been delighting the world in silence for 60 years.

In Paris on Saturday, he, and his restless alter-ego "Bip", fell still. He was 84. Marceau was perhaps the most loved and internationally admired of all French people. "Bip" – a pale, elastic-limbed clown with a striped shirt and limp red flower in his battered hat – was instantly recognisable from the United States to China.

"Bip" was inspired by the work of Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx and other early film stars. He also drew on – and revived – older, European traditions of silent theatre, such as the Italian Commedia dell'arte.

Marceau once suggested another, darker, reason for his wordless art. He was born into a French Jewish family in 1923. His father, Charles Mangel, a butcher, was deported from France in 1944 and died in Auschwitz concentration camp.

"The people who came back from the camps were never able to talk about it," he once said. "My name is Mangel. I am Jewish. Perhaps that, unconsciously, contributed towards my choice of silence."

The French Prime Minister, François Fillon, said yesterday: "A talent for telling stories without words conferred on Marcel Marceau a rare gift: the ability to speak to everyone, with no barriers of language or culture." The Culture Minister, Christine Albanel, said Marceau's "poetry and tenderness" had inspired performers in other theatrical disciplines for more than half a century.

Marceau claimed that mime was able to convey a more profound, or at least more universal, message than words. "Pantomime is a hypnotic art," he said. "It is a universal language". Marcel Marceau was born in Strasbourg on 22 March 1923. He fled the Nazi invasion of Alsace with his family in 1940 and eventually joined a resistance movement near Limoges.

After the war, he joined Charles Dullin's School of Dramatic Art, and studied under the celebrated mime artist Etienne Decroux. Marceau first made his name with his own company in a tiny theatre on the Paris Left Bank – the Théatre de Poche, where "Bip" was born 60 years ago this year.

A tour of the United States in the mid-1950s – the first of many – turned him into an international celebrity. In 1967, he bumped into his boyhood hero, Charlie Chaplin, at Orly airport in Paris. He launched immediately into a pastiche of Chaplin's dance routine with a cane and then burst into tears and threw his arms around the ageing star.

One of Marceau's most loved sketches was "Public Garden," where "Bip" became in turn all the characters in a park, from a small boy playing football, to the park warden to an old lady knitting. At other times, he might be a bad-tempered waiter, an incompetent lion-tamer, a man chasing butterflies or a flirt at a cocktail party. In one of his later routines – he was making 250 appearance a year until the late 1990s – he mimed all the ages of mankind, from youth to death, in a couple of minutes.

Although Marceau never spoke on stage, he did once famously speak in a film. He appeared in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie in 1976 and said the only word: "non". Off stage, like one of his heroes, Harpo Marx, he was a very talkative man. "Never get a mime talking," he once said. "He won't stop." Marcel Marceau was a modest man, except when describing his own achievements. "I have a feeling that I did for mime what Segovia did for the guitar, what Casals did for the cello," he once said.

In the 1950s and 1960s, his company was the only troupe of mime artists in the world. He founded the Ecole Internationale de Mimodrame in Paris in 1978, which is still the only school of its kind. The pop star Michael Jackson based his moonwalk routine on Marceau's sketch of a man walking against the wind.

Marceau is survived by his four children.

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Obituary
Marcel Marceau,
Mime artist and teacher

Marcel Mangel (Marcel Marceau), mime: born Strasbourg, France 22 March 1923; Director, Compagnie de Mime Marcel Marceau 1949-64; Director, Ecole Internationale de Mimodrame de Paris Marcel Marceau 1978-2005; three times married (two sons, two daughters); died Paris 22 September 2007.

Wearing white trousers, a crumpled top hat adorned with a bedraggled red artificial flower and a striped vest with big buttons, and with a mask of a face that was able to suggest a thousand different impressions, the celebrated mime Marcel Marceau produced an astonishing variety of brief dramatic scenes and comical encounters with himself – The Cage, Walking Against the Wind, The Maskmaker, The Park, among others – and a gallery of unforgettable characters – head waiters, mad sculptors, matadors, dictators and ballet dancers. Of Marceau's moving depiction of the four ages of man, Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death, one critic said, "He accomplishes in less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes."

He was born Marcel Mangel, the son of a butcher, in Strasbourg in 1923. He attended schools in Strasbourg and Lille and even as a child was a gifted mimic of animals and human beings. He enjoyed the silent movies of the 1920s, in which his favourite stars were Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Stan Laurel and above all Charlie Chaplin ("To us, he was a god"), whom he was to meet later in life. Their films were silent, so they had to express their feelings through mime.

When Marcel was 16, the Second World War began and in September 1939, Strasbourg had to be evacuated. For a while he took courses in painting and enamelling at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Limoges, and he was to become a gifted illustrator of his own works. His father was deported to Auschwitz, where he later died, and Marcel joined the Resistance, moving to Paris. On one occasion, in 1944, as he was coming out of the Métro, he was stopped by two plain-clothes policemen who asked to see his papers. They were perfect fakes, for Marcel Mangel, as both a Resistance spy and a Jew, was on the wanted list. The narks kept examining his papers and looking at his face, while he stared back at them without batting an eyelid, showing no trace of fear. The men were baffled, and let him go. It was an early demonstration of the powers of mime.

In 1945, he began attending Charles Dullin's famous school of dramatic art in the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, where he also followed classes given by Etienne Decroux, who had invented the system of "mime corporel" – corporeal mime. It became the basis for Mangel's own art of facial and bodily control. One of his fellow students was Jean-Louis Barrault, who appreciated his exceptional talents as both actor and mime. Mangel became a member of Barrault's own company and was cast in the role of Arlequin in the "mimodrama" Baptiste, a role Barrault had made famous in the 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis.

Mangel was such a success that Barrault encouraged him to present his own mimodrama, "Praxiteles and the Golden Fish" (1946), at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt. Its popularity made Mangel decide to embark upon the career of a mime. The stage name he chose was Marcel Marceau, taken from a line in a poem by Victor Hugo about a great general, Marceau-Desgraviers. But the character he created was "Bip".

Marceau borrowed Bip's name from the character of Pip in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations and indeed Bip resembled the wan-faced waifs of Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickleby. He had the woebegone orphan look of children in early silent movies, like Jackie Coogan in The Kid or Oliver Twist.

"Born in the imagination of my childhood," Marceau once wrote of his greatest success, "Bip is a romantic and burlesque hero of our time. His gaze is turned not only towards heaven, but into the hearts of men."

Marceau's scenarios for his sketches were minimal, given body by his weird physical agility and an acute sense of "scenic time". In 1949 he started his own mime company at the tiny Théâtre de Poche in Montparnasse. Its first performance, in 1951, was a mime drama based on Gogol's tale The Overcoat. It was such a popular success that Marceau enlarged the company and produced classic period mime dramas including Pierrot de Montmartre (1952) and the more ambitious Le Mont de Piété ("The Pawn Shop", 1956).

But unlike the "straight" theatre, mime in France has never enjoyed official financial sponsorship, so Marceau had on occasion to abandon his company and start to make a living on tour as Bip in celebrated solo turns.

He toured Europe for eight years. His big break in America came in 1955-56 and Marcel Marceau and mime became inextricably linked in the public mind across the world.

"Americans are like big children – they never lose their sense of amazement and wonder," he once said of his transatlantic fans. "I show them something they have never seen before."

Marceau's beautiful Bip Hunts Butterflies had obviously influenced the great ballet dancer Jean Babilée when in the 1950s I saw him dancing in London in the ballet Le Papillon. Bip toured the whole world, to universal acclaim. He enchanted the Japanese, who after the war were still trying to learn foreign languages. They adored Bip because he was able to express every human feeling without words, and when I arrived in Japan in 1959 the Japanese were still under his spell.

By the end of his life, by Marceau's reckoning he had toured in 65 countries. He gave a rare touch of originality to television shows and appeared in several films, including the cult sci-fi adventure Barbarella (1968), starring Jane Fonda (with Marceau in the role of Professor Ping) and Mel Brooks's Silent Movie (1976), in which Marceau spoke the only line (in fact the only audible word), "Non!"

The list of Marceau's prizes and academic honours is enormous. He was an Officier de la Légion d'honneur, Grand Officier de l'Ordre nationale du Mérite, Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres de la Republique Française, and received honorary doctorates from American universities including Princeton, Michigan and Columbia. Bip received a "Molière d'honneur" in Paris in 1999. And the city of Paris finally endowed the art of mime and Marcel Marceau with enough money to run a permanent school there.

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(--> The article and obituary appeared on belfasttelegraph.co.uk)

"Deadly Chemicals
And Mushroom Cloud"

.(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
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Weapon
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By thepoetryman
They didn't warn us of this growing up.
How could they?
They too had been sold deceit painted to look like gold.

We shall continue to wander off into the dark,
Lumbering through the sludge,
Leaving the whole thing as it was;
We’ll not be the last to ingest it.

We’ll stay kneeled behind the world,
Behind authorities stench,
Our noses filling with it-
For we are an obedient creature
Watching everything we’re here for disappear
And everything we should fear being painted gold!

We’re too busy warring-
We’re too busy dreaming-
We’re too busy scheming-
We’re too busy competing-
We’re too goddamned busy!

O never have we seen such indifference!
Never have we stared so eyeless,
Breathing in the stink of depravity,
Howling that our things are being confiscated,
Agape at the murder and rape of mankind,
Screeching of powers rush forward,
Of our being strapped to the slab of want,
Our freedoms turning nose skyward
As they plunge from the precipice we made,
Screaming of deadly chemicals and mushroom cloud!

Christ!
Can we not make our existence fit for love,
Not submissive to these spineless, lousy rogues
Hell-bent on ruin?
Not the way we’ve existed-
Not the way we’re now living
And will go on living until they say we’re not.
We’ve known all this time who's had the weapons
But we’ve no sense that we’re the filthy trigger…

copyright 2007 tpm
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FUCID

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Have a look at the FUCID bulletin (FUCID, in English, "University Foundation of International Cooperation for Development", is a non-governmental organization based in Namur, Belgium). By clicking on the image above, read the full report in pdf (this month, the main subjects are the situation in Burma, Congo and Benin). Sorry it's only available in French.

Warm thanks to Benjamin Moriamé for using one of my paintings in the cover... Benjamin Moriamé is a talented Belgian journalist who wrote several articles in the presented bulletin.
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Waiting to Bloom
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The World's Like
a Flower


By Free Faller

The world’s like a flower
Either fallen or grown
The leaves cover secrets
And the petals are shown
We're like a flower

The world's like a rose
Every rose has its thorns
If we make a mistake
The skin gets torn
We're like a flower

The world's like a daisy
Pretty and bright
We all have our colors
But in a way we're just right
We're like a flower

The world's like a flower
All the thorns will pass through
The world's like a flower
Just waiting to bloom

(The poem appeared on aboutflowershome.com)
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Candle Light

Dominika Timoszuk
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(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
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Dreamy Invader


By Dominika Timoszuk

You and You
always in my dreams
Real, so real
only when I sleep
Close, too close
makes me feel afraid
That my whisper
will reveal
will betray
that You were here

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The 2 persons represented are my dear friends
Dominika Timoszuk and Leszek Boltruczuk.
Dominika graduated in law and got a master degree
in criminology. However, she is rather interested in arts and
literature. She also loves music and sings in her rockband
and sometimes writes about life observations.

Visit Dominika's great blog, "Inner Light"

All the poems posted here are by Dominika Timoszuk.

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Under my skin

By Dominika Timoszuk

Nothing new under my skin:
Blood perversely rushes through veins
Every move strains my muscles
Every heartbeat closes Death.

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Nirvana of Mine

By Dominika Timoszuk

A thoughtless moment-
joyful nonexistance
With no past behind me-
laugh at ego persistence.

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I'm every woman

By Dominika Timoszuk

I'm every woman
Craving for attention
Sweet lies
not to mention

A walking contradiction
Within just one month
Anything can happen
That is woman's life.

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Against Disabilism

By Dominika Timoszuk

Come in handy Handicapped
Show us how to treasure
What we take for granted
Without having a measure

For we can walk
and march for war
For we can speak
but tell all lies

Handicapped we are
Though having all we need
With no compasion- mentally ill
Looking so fine- rotten underneath

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Sweet Dreaming

By Dominika Timoszuk

Again-the dreaming-
And that sweet, sweet feeling
when the dream slips woken mind.

And moment of truth
You're gone, no more us-two
And again I'm all alone.

A banal cliché
Fatal anyway
I'm killing the dream
Stuck in reality.

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Provoking Myself

By Dominika Timoszuk

I dreamt of hugging that made me shiver
I dreamt of sucking that made me blush
I dreamt of licking that made me give her
the whole small prudish world of mine

And then I woke up and right beside me
There was she lying stark naked, so pleased
And realised it wasn't just dreaming
And here I go- a totally new Me.

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Wind in my Hair

By Dominika Timoszuk

Wind in my hair
Euphemism today
Can't blame the wind
It's blowing like hell

Drops from the sky
Euphemism once more
Can't blame the rain
It wets me to the core.

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Long ago

By Dominika Timoszuk

When the past comes back
And gets sitted right beside You
Then you realise
That it is all behind You

And the words he says don't hurt
Though they still make melody
Though the looks can't deceive
No they can't, indeed!

And though moment gets me stuck
In- between realities
There's no place for regrets
Only pleasure memories

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The Verses from the Bus

By Dominika Timoszuk

The fragility of Fate!
Though Fate seems so grave
That's just an illusion
The mix, the fusion

Of impossibility
Of ridiculous

The mingle of you and me
Sweet, sour, loving, mean
Exaggeration, duration
Of our small nation

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While drunk...

By Dominika Timoszuk

Drunk in my mind
Physically sober
That is my way
to survive October

Soon to come winter
Freezes my cheer
Leaves cover my bed
Need You to warm me Dear

I deeply hope
Like nature blooms
That in the spring
I'll also do

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The Handicapped

By Dominika Timoszuk

Come in handy Handicapped
Show us how to treasure
What we take for granted
Without having a measure

For we can walk
and march for war
For we can speak
but tell all lies

Handicapped we are
Though having all we need
With no compasion- mentally ill
Looking so fine- rotten underneath

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Sad Conclusion

By Dominika Timoszuk

Don't worry, be happy
Friday the Thirteenth
Nothing bad can happen
Except for this:

You spill the milk all over
You crush Your shiny Rover
You really deadly miss her
You stain your favourite T-shirt

Don't worry, be happy
Saturday- Fourteenth
Nothing bad will happen
Except for this:

You...

On and on all over
Like on the carousel
Life chases destiny
Through triviality...

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The Greed

By Dominika Timoszuk

Oh, God's little malice
Forbiding the greed
When it's all people's nature
The craving for life

To grab it and taste it
With their mouths full
They mumble sinning
always yearn for more

Insatiable desire
Never to be fullfilled
But that urge lasts forever
But that is all in vain.
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