As global talks on the economic crisis continue...

Things still look bad and the world is still trying to figure it out.

With that said, I want to revisit what Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a few weeks ago at a talk in the States:

“While recently we have heard much in this country about how problems on Wall Street are affecting innocent people on Main Street, we need to think more about those people around the world with no streets. Wall Street, Main Street, no street – the solutions devised must be for all,” he stressed.

I guess I say this because also in the news is:

People are still starving

People are still without basic amenities

People are still caught up in horrific conflicts

I really, really hope that as we go forward in this economic mess, we remember how big the world is.

Myanmar blogger jailed for 20 years

Oh, nice.

In the second case, poet Saw Wai received a two-year jail sentence for a poem he wrote for Valentine's Day that contained a veiled jab at the junta's leading figure, Senior Gen. Than Shwe.

The first words of each line in the eight-line poem, "February the Fourteenth" spelled out the message: "Senior General Than Shwe is crazy with power."

...

How about a poem that spells out no s#!t.

Deprogramming Jihadists

By KATHERINE ZOEPF
The Saudi government is trying to rehabilitate violent Islamists by addressing their psychological needs. Could therapy be the best sort of counterterrorism?

Interesting article

Getting Tough - Deported in Coma, Saved Back in U.S.

GILA BEND, Ariz. — Soon after Antonio Torres, a husky 19-year-old farmworker, suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident last June, a Phoenix hospital began making plans for his repatriation to Mexico.

Mr. Torres was comatose and connected to a ventilator. He was also a legal immigrant whose family lives and works in the purple alfalfa fields of this southwestern town. But he was uninsured. So the hospital disregarded the strenuous objections of his grief-stricken parents and sent Mr. Torres on a four-hour journey over the California border into Mexicali.

Article here. Wow.

John Baldessari

Absurd, awesome, absurdly awesome, awesomely absurd:









Excerpt from this interview with the artist-

Nicole Davis: What led you to become an artist?

JB: I always had this idea that doing art was just a masturbatory activity, and didn't really help anybody. I was teaching kids in the California Youth Authority, an honor camp where they send kids instead of sending them to prison. One kid came to me one day and asked if I would open up the arts and crafts building at night so they could work. I said, "If all of you guys will cool it in the classes, then I'll baby-sit you." Worked like a charm. Here were these kids that had no values I could embrace, that cared about art more than I. So, I said, "Well, I guess art has some function in society," and I haven't gotten beyond that yet, but it was enough to convince me that art did some good somehow. I just needed a reason that wasn't all about myself.

The Take Away Shows

My brother introduced me to this amazing concept they have going on at La Blogotheque.

Basically they invite musicians (typically indie bands and ...Jason Mraz?) to play their music whilst roaming the streets (typically Paris).

Check it out, it's awesome.

Human smuggling across Gulf of Aden and Mediterranean Sea keeps rising – UN

4 November 2008 – The number of people illegally crossing the Gulf of Aden and the Mediterranean Sea is on the rise, the United Nations refugee agency reported today, as it confirmed that 12 people fleeing Somalia in the past week have been found dead on a beach in Yemen and 28 others remain missing.Smugglers forced up to 40 people overboard into the deep waters of the Gulf of Aden as they were on the last leg of the 36-hour journey from strife-torn Somalia to Yemen on Sunday, the 75 survivors told the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at its Ahwar reception centre.

Article here.