Till min pågående hemtenta i statsvetenskap - visst är det supertydligt? Lite spännande är det i alla fall att försöka rita upp en struktur med pilar hit och dit. Och tränar man inte lär man sig intet. Den hör till en artikel där det analyseras hur Ronald Reagan:s presidentskap påverkades av en pappa med alkoholism:

Ronald Reagan’s Presidency: The Impact of an Alcoholic Parent

(Artikeln är mycket bättre än min tafatta figur)

Eu tento mais em mais ser eu mesmo, me importando relativamente pouco se as pessoas aprovam ou desaprovam.
Vincent Van Gogh
Não existe nada mais difícil para um pintor verdadeiramente criativo do que pintar uma rosa, porque antes que ele possa faze-lo ele primeiro precisa esquecer todas as rosas que ele pintou até hoje.
Henri Matisse
Somente quando [...]

Two new proposals from the government of Ethiopia will make it illegal to work on democracy and human rights in the country. Human Right Watch, warns about the issue on their website.

The law is ostensibly a tool for enhancing the transparency and accountability of civil society organizations. But in fact, its provisions would create a complex web of arbitrary restrictions on the work civil society groups can engage in, onerous bureaucratic hurdles, draconian criminal penalties, and intrusive powers of surveillance.

In Human Rights Watch’s view, the intended and actual result of this law would be to make it nearly impossible for any civil society organization to carry out work the government does not approve of. It also contravenes fundamental human rights guaranteed by international law and by Ethiopia’s constitution. Most notably, the law would criminalize human rights-related work carried out by non-Ethiopian organizations while at the same time making it impossible for domestic human rights organizations to operate with any real degree of effectiveness or independence.

Any organizations and international donors have strongly protested against the law and say this will largely affect Ethiopia’s ability to receive development aid.

I think that Ethiopia have showed many progressive signs in the past and I hope this law not pass the parliament.

I stayed up to listen to the US second presidential debate, and I got pretty scared. Both Barack Obama and John McCain talked a lot about offshore drilling for new oil, and did´t reach in that good on alternative energy sources to the oil. John McCain talked about offshore drilling as the answer to the current problems in the United States, this is very dangerous to see more oil production as the answer.

McCain are also making a mistake when he try to score points on Obamas fears of what to do with nuclear waste. This is going to be a major issue for the future. How can we store something that will be dangerous to people for 100 000 years?

Obama, are also talking about offshore drilling, but makes a fair point when he says that it´s not only a challenge, it´s an opportunity. The country that will take the lead in creating new green technologies will get a lot of jobs and be a winner in the global society in the future.
- The United States have 3 percents of the worlds oil reserves, and we uses 25 percent of the worlds oil, we can´t just drill our way out of the problem, Obama says.

No one of the candidates are the real global leader to make change in this issue, but Barack Obama are by far the best choice of the two.

A copy of the e-mail from One.org.

Right now, a brilliant proposal is brewing in the European Commission: give €1 billion left over from the 2008 budget—lots of it unspent agricultural subsidy money—to African farmers.

This is an exceptional opportunity to give the right money, to the right people, at the right time. Moving the proposal forward, however, may prove difficult. This is where we come in.

European leaders are gathering in Brussels on 15 October. They’ll have a full schedule with the financial turmoil, but it’s crucial that they also provide momentum to this agriculture proposal. We can help by petitioning French President Sarkozy, who is currently presiding over the European Council, to take the lead in approving the €1 billion proposal.

Click the link below to add your name to our petition:
http://tinyurl.com/3vguz3

Petition text:

Please spend € 1b of unused money in the EU budget as additional development assistance to African farmers.

The World Bank estimates that growth in agriculture is twice as effective at reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. This growth is most needed to help smallholder farmers, the majority of whom are women, who are being hit hardest by soaring food and fuel prices. Since the UN Summit last month didn’t fully answer this need, it is especially important that European leaders pounce on this opportunity to help farmers help themselves in this time of economic uncertainty.

The EU meeting on 15 October is only the first step. The final decision won’t come until early December, but this is a key moment for leaders to give the proposal some momentum. Please add your voice to our petition now, and rest assured that we will continue pushing on this in the coming months:

http://tinyurl.com/44ufe2

Thank you for taking part,

Roxane Philson, ONE.org

Voltei pra aula de sapateado (pro começo, diga-se), no primeiro dia foi Mama Africa e no segundo, Barbatuques. Será que estamos dominando o mundo? Depois dizem que não somos potência… afe! Estou trabalhando para que a fama se mantenha, mas ô responsabilidade! Preciso dizer pra professora que entender a letra me atrapalha!
E terminei Harry Potter [...]

I got an e-mail today from the advocacy organization Avaaz regarding the fact that the European Union are finalizing their Climate and energy plan. This is a call for action to get the elected parliamentarians know that they got the people on their side.

Dear friends around Europe,

Far from the eyes of the media, elected representatives in the European Parliament are writing a climate and energy plan for our continent. As citizens, we’ve campaigned hard for a global deal to stop catastrophic global warming, and Europe’s negotiators have driven progress in international talks — but if big polluters succeed in watering down Europe’s own climate action plan, all our momentum will be lost. And that’s just what’s happening right now.

This Tuesday afternoon, European parliamentarians are gathering to finalize their proposals — but the whole plan is being undermined by industry lobbyists demanding they lock in massive “permits to pollute”, which would put emissions targets completely out of reach for 2020 and beyond.[2] Before it’s too late, in the next 48 hours, let’s deluge representatives from our own countries with emails and phone calls — urging them not to give in to the lobbyists, and instead to put forward strong plans to build a sustainable future for our societies, showing the world the way forward.

Just click the link below to see the names and phone numbers of the representatives from your own country — we’ve added a few “talking points” you can use in your emails and phone calls:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_our_future_europe/?cl=133620462&v=2246

That is what we are demanding:

* Europe should not hand out free permits to pollute after 2013.
If we promise massive permits to pollute from now until 2020, we will never hit our targets. It’s giving up on the global negotiations before we’ve even tried. We need to encourage our industries to become more efficient and to invest in a more sustainable future.

* Europe cannot meet its targets by buying “offsets” overseas. We should definitely support developing countries with technology and funding to reduce their own emissions. But that is no substitute for taking action ourselves. The world will fail to avert climate catastrophe unless Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions fall dramatically: offsets aren’t enough.

* Stop dirty coal-fired power stations - and support testing of carbon capture and storage. Coal is currently one of the dirtiest sources of energy - we can’t meet our targets if we build more dirty coal-fired power stations. As people from NGOs to businesses are saying, we need to invest instead in exploring whether “carbon capture and storage” can work. This technology may be one of the only ways to stop the growth of China’s emissions. Meanwhile, no new coal-fired power stations.

* Invest in a clean-technology future!

I saw that Rwanda officially launched of their laptop initiative last week. President Paul Kagame presided over the ceremony in conjunction with Education Minister Théoneste Mutsindashyaka. The event was attended by the Rwandan prime minister, the supreme court’s chief justice, the entire cabinet, and leaders from civil society and the NGO community. Five hundred students and their teachers from the first laptop schools also were on hand. President Kagame, Minister Mutsindashyaka, Nicholas and David Cavallo spoke to the gathering. Kagame committed his office to bringing laptops to every primary school child in the country.

One Laptop Per Child and all the other initiatives are doing a very good job, but they are only laying out the infrastructure. What we need now are to provide the content. The E-Learning Africa conference are on the right way, taking about content and how we can make this opportunity a reality.

Computers are not going to provide the change, it´s what we do with them.

This video are for a Swedish professor in global health, Hans Rosling. And it´s a very good introduction to the field of global health. The world is getting better.

A friend of mine, Björn Richter from Germany, are currently living in Gaborone, Botswana to do an internship at the Southern African Development Community and to do research for his final thesis about cross-boundary water-management in Southern Africa.

Follow his blog at http://www.inyas-blog.eu.

Next weekend I will be in Helsinki, Finland to live blog from the youth conference Globsol. Around 100 young people from the Nordic countries will participate and talk about global health and what we can do to make it better.

You can follow the blog at http://globsol.joneysworld.com.

In the middle of Globsol, on Friday at 12noon Helsinki-time the Nobel Committee will announce their winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Who do you think will win, please comment with your vote, your name and e-mail.. All the people that are right will get the book An Inconvenient Truth by the last years winner, Al Gore.

You can vote until five minutes before the announcement.

Bet´s on!

On Friday, at 10pm GMT the winner of the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced in Oslo, Norway. I will be following the presentation and will publish my views on it Friday by noon GMT. Some peace groups have been critical of the committee that they are choosing laureates that are not specifically working for peace. I don´t agree and believe that Professor Yunus or Al Gore are working for peace and security their ways.

But if the Nobel Committee are listening to the criticism and are choosing some of the people working for peace this year, I think the prize will go to the people behind the peace deal in Kenya or Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. If they choose to continue to choose people not directly linked to peace work it´s a whole other story.

The last ten years, the laureates have been:

2007
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Al Gore

2006
Muhammad Yunus
Grameen Bank

2005
International Atomic Energy Agency
Mohamed ElBaradei

2004
Wangari Maathai

2003
Shirin Ebadi

2002
Jimmy Carter

2001
United Nations
Kofi Annan

2000
Kim Dae Jung

1999
Médecins Sans Frontières

1998
John Hume
David Trimble

Today, the laureates of the 2008 Right Livelihood Award where released.

Founded in 1980 the Right Livelihood Awards are presented annually in the Swedish Parliament and are often referred to as ’Alternative Nobel Prizes’. They were introduced “to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”.

The laureates 2008 are:

Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan, and their organisation LAFTI (Land for the Tillers’ Freedom) (India), who receive an Award “for two long lifetimes of work dedicated to realising in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development, for which they have been referred to as ‘India’s soul’.” More information about them here.

Amy Goodman (USA), founder and award-winning host of Democracy Now!, a daily grassroots, global tv/radio news hour, is honoured “for developing an innovative model of truly independent political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.”

Asha Hagi (Somalia) The Jury honours Asha Hagi “for continuing to lead at great personal risk the female participation in the peace and reconciliation process in her war-ravaged country.”

Monika Hauser (Germany), gynaecologist and founder of medica mondiale, receives an Award “for her tireless commitment to working with women who have experienced the most horrific sexualised violence in some of the most dangerous countries in the world, and campaigning for them to receive social recognition and compensation.”

Inifrån forumet: Rösterna, politiken, kritiken, demonstrationen. Rapporteringen från forumet ger en stolt och sprakande bild av vad som nyss har passerat i Malmö. Till alla som har funderat på en prenumeration på någon av de kritiskt präglade veckotidningarna kan det varmt rekomenderas! Vänta inte!

Fria Tidningen: Tema ESF 2008

Arbetaren: Tema ESF 2008

Flamman: Ignacio Ramonet: ”Vi är en medial gerilla”

ETC: Röster från ESF

Efter Arbetet: ESF - en dag efteråt

Dagens Arbete: Mycket facklig aktivitet på European Social Forum

Yelah.net - Malmö: Över 10 000 i bred demonstration mot kapitalism och miljöförstöring

Dagens Konflikt: ESF-bloggen

Motkraft: ESF2008: Motkraft sammanfattar Action Networks aktiviteter