Angela Hayden

Blogging in Iran

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Hayden) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:49:46 -0600

Iran: A nation of bloggers from Mr.Aaron on Vimeo.

Infographic about Iranian bloggers

Marriage Can Kill Women

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Hayden) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:29:35 -0600

In sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds of the world’s people living with HIV, women make up 60 percent of those infected. Not only are women biologically more susceptible than men to HIV, many behavioral and social factors play into women’s vulnerability.

This 12-minute documentary, filmed in Kenya, is intended to inform and provoke discussion of harmful gender and societal norms that put women and couples at risk for HIV. It is also intended for advocacy to mobilize political and financial support for sexual and reproductive health and rights to achieve broader social, economic and gender equity for everyone.

The Silent Partner: HIV in Marriage examines the risk of HIV within marriage and the particular challenges facing married women. Conventional HIV prevention strategies do not meet the needs of married women who cannot practice abstinence, cannot control the faithfulness of their husbands, and find it difficult to negotiate condom use.

Population Action International (PAI) works to ensure that every person has the right and access to sexual and reproductive health, so that humanity and the natural environment can exist in balance and fewer people live in poverty. Founded in 1965, PAI is an independent policy and research organization that accepts no government funds.

http://www.populationaction.org/silentpartner/index.html

From Child Soldier to Hip Hop Star. War Child Documentary.

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Hayden) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:52:26 -0600

War Child - About The Film

War Child, an award-winning documentary directed by C. Karim Chrobog, chronicles the tumultuous, shocking, inspiring, and ultimately hopeful odyssey of Emmanuel Jal. A former child soldier of Sudan's brutal civil war, he is now an emerging international hip hop star sharing a message of peace for his war-torn land and beloved Africa.

In the early 1980s at the age of seven, Jal was swept into Sudan's civil war, becoming one of 10,000 child soldiers conscripted on both sides of the two decade long conflict. After being forced to do many unimaginably horrible things, he escaped the soldier's camp and trekked for four months through Africa. He was eventually found and adopted by the now legendary British aid worker Emma McCune who had married Sudanese guerrilla commander Riek Machar and convinced him to not employ child soldiers. Shortly after she adopted Jal, McCune died in a suspicious car crash, leaving Emmanuel "orphaned"once again. Jal rose from ruthless child soldier to refugee to rap star. He found his own redemption and life mission through a message of peace that represents one of the 21st centuries' most inspiring and hopeful journeys, and a metaphor for the broader African predicament.

Emmanuel's journey is, in many ways, just beginning. His dream of Gua (peace) in Sudan and prosperity in Africa is threatened by corrupt leaders, genocidal warlords, and Western indifference. Hopefully, Emmanuel's peace quest to make the world a better place through his music, activism and youth education will prove to be far more significant than Emmanuel's former war.

War Child tells the story of Jal's life through his words and music, and remarkable film footage dating back to his childhood. Even at the age of seven, Emmanuel's charisma were so evident that National Geographic focused their own 1980's reportage on him as spokesperson for the children. Today, as Emmanuel travels the World, even into the halls of the US State Department, he takes us through his homeland's tormented history of civil war, assesses the prospects for peace after the country's 2005 ceasefire agreement, highlights the increasing problem of war children, and shines light on the growing African hip hop scene that is tackling the continent's ills through its music.

Eye Exercises Cures Helps To Limit the Severty or Prevent Migraines

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Hayden) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:33:11 -0600

UPDATE: Eye Exercises ~~Cures~~ Helps To Limit the Severty or Prevent Migraines

Also, deeply massaging below the eyebrows and close to the nose relieves pressure.
-------------

I've suffered from migraines since I was a teenager. I'm now 43 and the last two years I've been able to control them without medication ( such as imitrex ). I started doing eye exercises every night before bed. They hurt at first because the muscles were not being used.

After about half and hour I usually fall to sleep because it is exhausting and relaxing. I can feel sinus passages draining and the pain subsiding. Below is a chart of some good eye exercises from http://www.totemdog.com/eyesite/

		Look up, hold 5 seconds, relax your eyes. Look down, hold 5 seconds, relax your eyes. Repeat 5 times. Blink your eyes a few seconds.
		Look left, hold 5 seconds, relax your eyes. Look right, hold 5 seconds, relax your eyes. Repeat 5 times. Blink your eyes.
		Look up left, hold 5 seconds, relax your eyes. Look down right, hold 5 seconds, relax your eyes. Repeat 5 times. Blink your eyes.
		Look up right, hold 5 seconds, relax your eyes. Look down left, hold 5 seconds, relax your eyes. Repeat 5 times. Blink your eyes.
		Rotate eyeballs 10 circles to left. Blink your eyes.
		Rotate eyeballs 10 circles to right. Blink your eyes.
		Cross your eyes by looking at the tip of your nose. Look up at your eyebrows and then back to the tip the nose. Relax your eyes. Repeat 5 times. Blink your eyes.
		Close your eyes as tightly as you can. Hold 5 seconds, then relax. Open your eyes wide open. Hold 5 seconds, then relax. Repeat 10 times. Blink your eyes.

Eye exercise images from http://www.totemdog.com/eyesite/

How We Tolerate The Poor.

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Hayden) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 11:41:07 -0600

Upstate Girls - What Became of Collar City
from The Raw File on Vimeo.

Upstate Girls; What Became of Collar City is an ongoing documentary project that began in 2004. The roots of the epic are the coming of age stories of six young women in the post -industrial city of Troy, New York. “Upstate Girls” will be released across three platforms. A print book, feature length documentary film, and a multi-media web series that contextualize the young women’s personal stories in Troy’s important labor history will be released beginning spring of 2009. Look for updates on www.therawfile.org and a feature article in the Spring Issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review and GEO MAGAZINE later in 2009.

I was 16 years old by the time I completed the sentence of “probation” given to me by Albany County Family Court. I wanted to get out too. I was terrified of repeating the lives of resignation that I saw being played out in every corner of my community. I left upstate New York for Florida in 1977 in the Chevy Impala of an older friend who had spent time down south a few years before. I drifted in Miami.

Married an older man who could provide me with the home that I never had, worked as a waitress, a retail clerk and even a brief stint as a bartender in a strip club. I had a propensity for drugs and alcohol that seemed to add excitement to the monotony of survival. My dreams of freedom were all but lost in the grinder of substance when I met a woman who was to become my mentor and life mother. Maureen was like no one from the neighborhood where I had grown up. She approached life unburdened and instilled in me a sense of possibility and passion for analytical thinking that was considered “impractical, if not unknowable, in my immediate family”. She traveled, loved art, read books, and valued good conversation.

Through her, I eventually saw my misspent youth as a series of valuable lessons that I could bring to the classroom and an informed life. The trick was to develop a healthy enough sense of entitlement to enter the larger arenas of the life that I had envisioned since childhood. For Me, Maureen was that outside force that interrupted the predetermined course on which I felt my life would follow. She told me that the biggest obstacle that I faced was that somehow I had to overcome the message that gotten early on – which was that

"I had not earned my right to be here. "

I began slowly, taking classes at Broward Community College. My grades in English and a rudimentary photography course got me accepted into The Photojournalism Department at The University of Miami. I graduated in 1991 with a BS in Photo communication and a double major in Sociology.

I met “The Upstate Girls “ while on assignment for THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE in 2003. A friend and colleague, Adrian Nicole Leblanc had completed RANDOM FAMILY, a book that was to become extremely important in both the literary and social science world. The TIMES assigned me to take photographs for an excerpt that they were running. Afternoons full of kids in paneled rooms killing time till mothers dragged in from work, brought back feelings even 20 years of Miami Sun couldn’t fade. Days spent photographing girls on Sixth Avenue in Troy collapsed the decades between my own glassed in front porch on Second Avenue, the key under the mat after school, and my new life as a sophisticated professional. I drowned. I saw all our lives.

Money Power Respect - Pictures of My Neighborhood

Money Power Respect. Pictures of My Neighborhood.
Photographs by Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Text by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.
Channel Photographics, New York, 2005. 144 pp.,
100 varnished duotone illustrations, 8x10½".

Since 1996, photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally has documented the families in her Brooklyn neighborhood, quietly witnessing their struggle with poverty, social institutions, and the illicit drug trade. Having inspired the likes of Eugene Richards and Thomas Roma, Brooklyn proves an inexhaustible muse, and Kenneally comes to the familiar ground with a fresh perspective. Her poignant, psychological photographs span generations, tracing the same people she sees everyday on her street. With her camera, Kenneally narrates their tale of both hope and despair as she explores how her subjects empower themselves in a lost culture of drugs and prison. Money, Power, Respect: Pictures of My Neighborhood chronicles pregnancies and births, institutions and streets, drugs and rehab, showing the community of inner-city families at once full of life and also institutionalized by the welfare system. Through it all, Kenneally evokes their dreams for a better life, tempered with the awareness that they may be caught in the cyclic lifestyle of limited opportunities. The photographs are in the best sense fully present, alive to what is, rather than searching for what is not. Her images draw us to hope for their survival and compel us to experience the depths and complexities of family life in the American social and justice systems. Money, Power, Respect details a crucial historical moment in our nation’s nearly total abandonment of the poor. This book makes it impossible to turn away from the yearning towards life, to detach the economics of the situation from the machinery of the heart.

You can order it at:

Photo-Eye
Amazon
Barnes&Noble

Related Sites
Hour Children

Money, Power and Respect: Pictures of My Neighborhood
The Bronx Defenders
Women's Prison Association

Pinky Questions the Legality of Iraq War

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Hayden) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:27:19 -0500

Pinky wants some answers: Is the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq legal or illegal? Do any of the charges of illegality we've been hearing about have any legal basis at all? And why should we even care about international law anyway? Pinky and friends do the research and then tell you all the answers!

For more information visit:
http://www.pinkyshow.org/

The Pinky Show : concept & purpose

Q: What is The Pinky Show?
A: The Pinky Show is the original super lo-tech hand-drawn educational TV show. We focus on information & ideas that have been misrepresented, suppressed, ignored, or otherwise excluded from mainstream discussion. Pinky presents and analyzes the material in an informal, easy-to-understand way, with helpful illustrations that she draws herself. Episodes are available on the internet for free at www.PinkyShow.org.

Q: What is the purpose of The Pinky Show?
A: The Pinky Show presents marginalized perspectives as a means of challenging individuals to consider realities that lie beyond their own lived experiences. We believe that positive social change becomes real when human beings learn how to critically engage 'the Other' with openness, honesty, and compassion.

Q: What kind of things are discussed on The Pinky Show?
A: Pinky is curious about a wide range of subjects - little-known historical facts, critical analyses and interpretations of cultural texts (movies, art, advertisements, music, etc.), social and political commentary, issues of morality & ethics, and basically anything that people may not know or spend much time thinking about. The motivation for creating each show is simple - Pinky says: "All I want is to be able to understand things".

Q: Who makes The Pinky Show?
A: The Pinky Show is a project of Associated Animals Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization based in the United States. We have four members - Pinky & Bunny (research/writing/episode production), Mimi (organizational paper-pushing), and Kim (...um?). Associated Animals Inc. has no board of directors; member cats are only guided by curiosity and a willingness to work and learn.

Q: How do students & teachers benefit from watching The Pinky Show?
A: Pinky is especially interested in the kind of learning that takes place (or doesn't take place) in schools, and frequently corresponds with teachers who use the show in many different ways:

- For personal viewing, simply to expand their range of perspectives, or as an easy way to introduce themselves to information that they'd otherwise never (or rarely) be exposed to.

- For classroom showing, especially as a starting point for a more complex, varied, and critical dialogue on a certain subject or issue (the short-form aspect makes classroom showing very flexible when time management is a concern).

- As a way to introduce students to the underlying structural and historial forces that influence what kinds of information are included in their classroom textbooks, newspapers, magazines, television news, films, etc., and conversely, what kind of perspectives tend to be left out. The Pinky Show thus aims to consistently present a useful 'counterset' of information in order to complicate the smooth and automatic (and ultimately uncritical) consumption of information. Pinky does this because she believes that reductive, absolutist, and otherwise dishonest ways of thinking ultimately culminate in the very real and tangible harming of individuals, relationships, communities, and society itself.

In short, Pinky believes in openness rather than closure. Likewise, open-minded teachers will find many uses for The Pinky Show.

Q: What age level is The Pinky Show appropriate for?
A: Although the simplified visual style of the show recalls children's programming, The Pinky Show is in fact intended for an adult audience. The illustrations only look this way because Pinky has minimal talent for art.

Q: Is making animated episodes the only kind of work you cats do?

A: No, actually we do lots of other things too, thank you for asking! The Pinky Show is a multi-aspect educational project - our activities also include the production of site-specific art, collaborating on community-based education and media activism projects, maintaining a fact sheet library, organizing online cultural programming, blogging, and some other stuff. Contrary to popular misconceptions, cats are really hard working! The form is always changing, but our goals remain the same (see above!).

For more information visit:
http://www.pinkyshow.org/

Lipsticked White Supremacist Doth Protest Too Much His Homosexuality

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Hayden) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:09:14 -0500

The New York Times ran a story about the "Arrests in Plan to Kill Obama and Black Schoolchildren".

Methinks the white supremacist man doth protest too much. I noticed that the photo of the man looks more like a woman wearing lipstick. His parents should have allowed him to express his homosexuality. Suppression leads to extremism.

UPDATE: From

(TapwaterJ)

"Perhaps the lipstick is solidarity with Palin . . . "

Associated Press

Daniel Cowart of Bells, Tenn., was one of two men
charged in what officials called a white supremacist

From NEW YORK TIMES:

WASHINGTON — Two young men who are believers in “white power” have been arrested and charged in Tennessee in what federal officials described as a plan to assassinate Senator Barack Obama and kill black children at a school.

Federal officials said they regarded the scheme as “serious.” It does not appear to have moved to an advanced stage, according to court documents unsealed Monday, but officials said the two men did acquire several rifles and cased a home and a gun store to rob as part of the plan.

Federal officials said that both of the men who were arrested — Paul Schlesselman, 18, of West Helena, Ark., and Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tenn. — told interrogators that they had talked of assassinating Mr. Obama. Lawyers for the men could not be reached.

The two men “planned to drive their vehicle as fast as they could toward Obama shooting at him from the windows,” according to an affidavit filed in federal court in Jackson, Tenn., by an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Mr. Obama has no plans to be in Tennessee, and the affidavit does not make clear whether the men had picked a place for an attack.

The assassination was to be the culmination of a “killing spree” that would also single out children at an unnamed, predominately black school, federal officials said. The men talked of “killing 88 people and beheading 14 African-Americans,” according to the affidavit.

The two men each had “very strong views” about Aryan white power and “skinhead” ideology, the federal officials said, and the numbers 88 and 14 have special significance in the white power movement. The number 88 is shorthand for “Heil, Hitler” — H is the eighth letter in the alphabet —and 14 signifies a 14-word mantra among white supremacists: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” read the rest at THE NEW YORK TIMES

Conservative Ass-Kissers Doing Away With Violence Against Women Act VAWA

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Hayden) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:53:17 -0500

Crazy Conservatives Doing Away With VAWA (Violence Against Women Act )

Right Wing Watch Reports:

Apparently, at the Eagle Forum and RADAR [Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting] co-hosted an all-day event entitled “The Conflict between Federal Domestic Violence Policies and Traditional Family Values” [PDF] at The Heritage Foundation that will focus on how to do away with the Violence Against Women Act: .

The Violence Against Women Act, which now costs the federal government $1 billion a year, has spawned an industry that undermines Constitutional protections, thwarts welfare reform, weakens military readiness, fosters immigration fraud, and is harmful to families. This conference will probe how to rein in a federal law that increasingly encroaches on the personal lives of millions of Americans.

Just check out the forum’s (CRAZY CONSERVATIVES) agenda:

9:30
Feminist Fatherphobia and Domestic Violence
Phyllis Schlafly – Eagle Forum

10:00
How Marriage Protects Against Domestic Violence
Robert Rector – Heritage

10:45
How Domestic Violence Policies Weaken Families and Harm Children
Stephen Baskerville, PhD – Patrick Henry College Foundation

11:15
VAWA: Victimizing All Taxpayers Act?
Benjamin Foster, PhD, CPA – University of Louisville College of Business

11:45
Impact on Military Readiness
Elaine Donnelly – Center for Military Readiness

It’s easy to understand that “marriage protects against domestic violence” provided that you share Schlafly’s view that wives cannot be raped by their husbands.

Organizations Doing Good Work to Help Victims of Domstic Violence:
www.CenterAgainstDV.org - Housing, Shelters, Support Services Get The Help That You Need!

www.enddomesticabuse.org - Learn the 5 red flags of domestic abuse. Diagnostic tool available

www.FamilyPlace.org - Help For Victims Of Family Violence Learn More Or Donate Online Today

www.ndvh.org/ - National Domestic Violence Hotline

Women Are Heroes. The Women Project.

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Hayden) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:50:32 -0500

ACTION BRUXELLES 2 - GARE CENTRAL

by JR

ACTION IN BRUXELLES 1 - JR

by JR

The Women project wants to underline their pivotal role and to highlight their dignity by shooting them in their daily lives and posting them on the walls of their country.

On the other hand, by posting the same images of these women in Western countries, the project allows everyone to feel concerned by their condition and connects, through art, the two different worlds.

Kenya, South-Sudan, Sierra-Leone, Liberia - The violence suffered by women there is the extreme expression of discriminations. The ethnic wars in Africa are a source of the worst crimes on women. When meeting them, JR wants to testify of their force, their courage and their noble struggle: first to live, then to exist.

Right now JR is in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil where the context of favelas has encouraged to meet women for whom crime, violent lost of loved ones and arbitrary repression are part of everyday life.

In 2008/2009, JR plans to visit India, Cambodia, Laos, Marcs, then return to Kenya.

To the limits of contemporary art – the goal is once again to reach the limits of Art in a closed social and cultural environment and watch the reaction of the local population. What is at stake here is the assessment of the possibilities of intervention in the different environments. The success of such a process allows drawing a status of women in their countries. Proof by action is chosen.

In the Western countries, the exhibitions of the project will recall this artistic adventure, committed and committing.

Citizen Journalists Video the Vote

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Hayden) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 17:13:28 -0500

Video the Vote 2008

Video the Vote is a national initiative to protect voting rights by monitoring the electoral process. We organize citizen journalists—ordinary folks like you and me—to document election problems as they occur. And then we distribute their footage to the mainstream media and online to make sure the full story of Election Day gets told. Watch our 2006 highlights and join us as we Video the Vote this November.

Sign up to Video the Vote and join a growing network of Americans working together to monitor and improve our election systems. We are concerned citizens, amateur videographers, voting rights activists, and filmmakers united by a commitment to strengthening democracy through citizen oversight. And we need your help:

Videographers - Get dispatched to cover problems in your area or go out and document on your own.
Dispatchers - Monitor the national voter hotlines and then send out videographers to get the stories.
Drivers - Help videographers get to where they're going.
Uploaders/tech support - Make sure volunteer videos get online and to the media as fast as possible.
Bloggers - Review volunteer footage and spread the word about the best clips.

Sign up to help ensure that the full story of Election Day gets told. And once you do, please spread the word.