Awesome Women: The Barefoot Solar Engineers of Africa

The Awesome Women of the Day are the "Barefoot Solar Engineers", women who left their African villages to spend six months at Barefoot University in India learning to create solar energy installations to power their villages. They brought their skills home, electrified their villages, and share their knowledge with others.





From the video narration:

This is about simple women in Africa who have made an extraordinary difference to their own communities, from Ethiopia to the Gambi, from Mauritania to Tanzania, a quiet revolution is taking place. Illiterate & semi-literate women, most of them grandmothers who have never left their villages in their lives, let alone going to another country several thousand miles away, they are making the impossible possible. They are baffling high-powered engineers, universities, donors, development planners and qualified experts by demonstrating incredible sophisticated skills and exposing the fundamental inadequacies of the formal educational system.

And a special shout-out to the woman who birthed and raised Sanjit “Bunker” Roy -- a man who recognizes that the best candidates for his project are women because of their superior patience and natural motivation to share what they have learned with their communities. Roy's Barefoot College has trained more than 3 million people for jobs in a bottom-up, social entrepreneurship approach to fight poverty and deprivation.

My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

Awesome Women: Phyllis Rodriguez & Aicha el-Wafi

It is Mother's Day many countries around the world. Today I  honor TWO AWESOME WOMEN OF THE DAY, Phyllis Rodriguez, whose son was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and Aicha el-Wafi, the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, accused, tried and convicted by the United States of being the missing "20th hijacker".

Women can bridge vast rifts. Women can heal the world. Only women. Happy Mother's Day to all of you. Regardless of how many children you do or don't have, your powers of love and care and action and courage are what the world needs now. ♥



My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

Quote of the Day: Suggested signs for Tea Partiers

Andrew Kimbralls excellent piece "The Empty Pulpit: The Obama Problem" in Tikkun criticizes the lack of ballsy action taken on the very issues Obama all us progressive types fired up about during his campaign. The piece is a stand-out because it illustrates ways in which the opinions and slogans of the reactionary right can be countered with common-sense points that might actually change some hearts and minds (rather than capitulation to the right and rather than dissembling in the name of political realism, as has been the case).

In his point about countering the "Government is the problem" meme, Kimbrall suggests:

To be true to their “anti-big government” message, Tea Party rallies should have been festooned with signs such as “Fire the Fireman,” “No More Police,” “Bite the Postman,” “We Support Fewer Teachers and Overcrowded Classrooms,” “Collapse our Bridges — No More Infrastructure,” “We’ll Pave and Build Our Own Roads,” “Citizens for Salmonella,” “Unsafe Drugs for Everyone,” “Americans for a Weak Defense,” “Senior Citizens Against Medicaid and Medicare.” These signs were missing, of course, and instead we have the endless brow furrowing over “big government” in both parties as the discussion remains conveniently abstract.

OK, you rugged individualists out there. Get out your steamrollers and line-painting equipment. Self-sufficiency, right?

Awesome Woman: Limor Fried

Today's AWOD is Limor Fried. She is an engineer, artist & hacker ("Ladyada"). She received her M.Eng in EECS from MIT where she developed and built subversive electronic devices, including a pair of glasses that darken whenever television is in view and a jamming device that disables people's annoying cell phone conversations at the press of a button. (see http://www.ladyada.net/portfolio/2004/index.html )

My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

of the corporations, by the corporations ...

Maine's Republican governor Paul LePage ordered a large mural depicting the illustrious history of unions in this country to be removed from the state's Department of Labor's premises.

"The mural has been removed and is in storage awaiting relocation to a more appropriate venue," said LePage press secretary Adrienne Bennett in a prepared statement. "We understand that not everyone agrees with this decision, but the Maine Department of Labor has to be focused on the job at hand."

... Administration officials said the change was needed to reflect a new image for the department, one not tilted toward organized labor. They said visitors to the lobby had complained that the mural is anti-business.

OK, then, so the new image for Maine's Department of Labor has been laid on the table in plain view: It is NOT there to encourage fair wages and safe working conditions. Seems like Maine is laying the groundwork to become the next state to attack public worker unions.

Some panels in the mural that LePage wants removed.

The Commissioner of Labor has also announced a contest to rename conference rooms that are currently dedicated to Labor heros such as Cesar Chavez and Frances Perkins. Hmmm. I can just see conference rooms in the Department of Labor named for Sam Walton and David Koch.

Awesome Women: Geraldine Ferraro

The Woman of the Day is Geraldine Ferraro, born in 1935 and died today. A  savvy New York Democrat, she was an attorney, a Democratic Party  notable, and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (New  York/Queens). In 1984 she was embraced as a symbol of women's equality  when she became the first Italian-American and first woman to be a  major-party Vice Presidential nominee, selected by Walter Mondale who  tried to unseat Ronald Reagan.

My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

Billboard Liberation

We at the BLF have been assisting fatigued advertising copywriters to strengthen their corporate messages for over thirty years. Advertising is the language of our Culture, as BLF CEO Jack Napier noted almost as many years ago. And the primary use of language is to to communicate ideas. The most efficient and direct communication of an idea comes through the most elegant use of the least amount of words to communicate that idea. It’s quite clear from the image in this Stella Artois billboard ad what the message IS. The BLF merely wishes to assist this campaign by paring down the words in order to match that message most perfectly. - BLF Education Officer, R.O. Thornhill.
The improvement can be seen at 38th St and 8th Ave in midtown New York.
The BLF (www.billboardliberation.com) has been improving outdoor advertising since 1977. Prior campaigns have included work for Exxon, R.J. Reynolds, and Apple Computers.

 See more examples of liberated billboards on BLF's "clients" page.

Comment of the Day: Lethal Ejaculation

Commenting on the below video on YouTube, MultiChrisjb says:

Every time I ejaculate, I kill millions of potential humans. So I should be in Jail! This makes every man a mass murderer. I'll turn myself in tomorrow....

 

Comment of the Day: The Poor Koch Brothers

All the people in this "ad" are socialists, communists, nazis, subversives, and "tera-ists".The real PATRIOTS are the persons who stand up for the Koch brothers. Last time I heard, the poor bros were down to their last 18 billion. This is not acceptable. These greedy teachers should give it up now, for the good of the Koch bros.

-- YouTube comment on this well-done ad by Bold Progressives and Democracy for America by "Gallagherfreak100"
 

Parsifal, Women, and the future of Iran (and everywhere)

PBS/WGBH have published a really lovely piece of writing by an anonymous "Arts Correspondent" via Tehran Bureau. The writer ruminates on Iranian society and the role of women, how things stay the same, how they are shifting, all painted in words on a multilayered canvas spanning cultures and eras (as per the headline: "Iranian Women and Wagner's Parsifal"), and moving with supreme grace from intimate personal perspectives, both first- and third-person, to the broader social picture.

The conclusion:

...beyond the reach of government oppression, women work to transform the many cultural contradictions of contemporary Iran into generosity and tolerance. The future of this country will have women at its heart and this is a fact.

The "Iran" Facebook "public profile" page is worth following for the superior mix of material coming out of Tehran Bureau. I only wish more of their authors could post with a by-line instead of anonymously.

Every Time ... that you put bleach in your washing machine

... consider capturing some of the water that drains from the first rinse cycle and using it to wash your kitchen and bathroom floors and fixtures.

The first rinse contains very little dirt, and enough soap and bleach to clean and disinfect. Why send all those harmful chemicals down the drain, only to fill a bucket with more to clean floors, tiles, sinks, toilet?

(... and PLEASE use as little bleach as possible. It's deadly stuff to us and to marine life (all life, in fact). In our apartment we have a mold condition that I have never been able to clean up other than using chlorine bleach. And we do not purchase disposable sponges, but instead use squares ripped from old bathtowels to wash dishes, wipe down food prep surfaces, etc. Killing bacteria on these cloths is important. I have tried boiling them to disinfect but they just look so dirty and dingy with coffee & grease stains that anyone besides me would think I'm using filthy rags to wash dishes and wipe the cutting board. So I use perhaps 1/4 cup of bleach per week and then reuse some of it for surface cleaning)

D'oh of the Day

Survey of online access finds digital divide: "A first-of-its-kind federal survey of online access found that Americans in lower-income and rural areas often have slower Internet connections than users in wealthier communities."

Minorities as majority

Minorities are majority population in Montgomery County, reports WashPo in today's Metro section.

As recently as 1990, seven out of 10 Maryland residents were white. Now, they are barely a majority, at 55 percent of the population.

Y'know, in a world that is what, 10 or 15 percent white, given that apart from the pitifully few who have chosen to retain identity as Native Americans everyone else in this country is an immigrant "from the rest of the world", 55 percent white population in any area of this country is still hugely disproportionate.

We may not be headed for a country full of Chocolate Cities so much as salt-n-peppa-and-spice-and-everything-nice. Watch out for the White Fear Backlash but the optimist in me believes that is temporary, once people have the chance to live closer together with "others" and just, well, get over it.

What about Jordan?

Is al Jazeera's English-language site going the way of the U.S. MSM?

I've seen plenty of complaints, and have made them myself, on Facebook walls and in Diaspora aspects regarding the heavy focus on Egypt in the MSM when there is in fact very widespread regional dissatisfaction, upheaval and revolt going on in the Middle East. The understandable interpretation of that tight Egyptian lens is that it stems from U.S.-centricism. Egypt is, of course, the States' "second most important ally in the region" and also receives the second-highest amount of foreign aid from the U.S.

This morning I notice a news feed somewhere pointing to a Reuters blurb that follows up on recent protests in Jordan and recent promises made by King Abudullah II to make immediate changes to the government. Yesterday Abdullah swore in a new government. This is an important bit of news, the first instance in the region of an incumbent making immediate changes without huge upheaval, but only more like "vocal unrest", sparking the event.

But what we should want to know is, Did Abdulllah make good choices? Are the people satisfied? Is he also perhaps making good on his old "soft promise" of moving power away from his own monarchy and into the hands of Jordanians? It looks like Abdullah's choices for replaced officials have little to do with any democratic process, and it looks like the newly instated officials are not likely candidates for supporting a truly fresh and democratic future for Jordan:

U.S. ally Abdullah appointed Marouf Bakhit, a conservative former premier drawn from the ranks of the powerful security establishment, last week to replace Samir Rifai, who was dismissed after just over a year in the job.

But it sure is hard to tell from this tiny blip of a Reuters item. It's one thing for the New York Times and Washington Post to have written nothing yet on this event. But nothing on Al Jazeera?

Which really leaves me to wonder if at least the English version of aljazeera.net is now catering to what they think U.S. readers want to hear about. Or is this news organization (for which on most days I actually have a good measure of respect) in general, in any language, giving Jordan scant coverage? Jordan, the country that is housing millions of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees? The country that attacked Israel and thus lost the West Bank years back, but has since cultivated (and perhaps earned) a reputation as being a fairly rational and moderate state? No coverage?

Here is al Jazeera's English home page this morning. Note the choice of articles highlighted in the bullet points below the top story:

Let's summarize those bullet points:

• Egypt
• Turkey (another strong U.S. ally)
• Israel
• Egypt
• Obama
• Egypt
• Egypt

A search for Jordan on the site turns up only stale and slim news.

(I will try to remember to search again later and update as necessary if al Jazeera has added any fresh coverage of Jordan)

tanks, bowties and banking standstill - Jon Snow in Cairo

UK's Channel 4 News is in Egypt, with International Editor Lindsey Hilsum reporting from Alexandria and others from Cairo.

Jon Snow writes from Cairo:

I have had the surreal experience of entering Egypt’s Finance Ministry. A grand white marble structure ringed with palm trees. Drawn up outside are not only tanks but rows and rows of bulletproof security trucks that are usually used to cart cash around the country. But there is no cash. The banks are closed. Shutting down the internet and mobile phones has not only disrupted the protesters’ communication it has bought banking to a complete standstill. Egypt is now not only in political crisis, but financial crisis too.

I went up to the 16th floor in the Finance Ministry to interview the new Minister of Finance Samir Radwan. We were greeted by men in bowties and dinner jackets. The elegant secretary in the outer office was clad in Gucci black. The minister himself is a delightful intellectual with no previous political experience. He is in fact Egypt’s leading academic on unemployment, poverty and regeneration. He is perhaps Mubarak’s only appointment who actually knows how to handle his portfolio.

Channel 4 is also providing live video and a liveblog feed at http://www.channel4.com/news/live-blog-egypt-protests-a-million-march-against-mubarak and, true to the embedded info in that link, it does look like a million people in the streets.

Obama skirts the legalization question

cross-posted on Workhorse Politics

About 26 minutes into the YouTube interview with President Obama, the top-voted question about legalizing (or at least decriminalizing) drugs was played.

Obama answers the public's video questions in
an interview with Steve Grove of YouTube.

The main point of legalization is to pull the rug out from under the foreign cartels and local gangs who control the illegal trade. The most common reason children get killed by stray bullets in the crossfire on our urban street corners is because of turf wars revolving around drugs. And the thrust of Officer Mackenzie Allen’s question was to do away with the violent market and international terrorism, but Obama did a quick two-step, describing drug use as a public health problem and the need to curtail demand. He did not actually answer the question.

Here’s my transcription of Obama’s answer to Allen:

Well, I think this is an entirely legitimate topic for debate. I am not in favor of legalization. I am a strong believer that we have to think more about drugs as a public health problem. When you think about other damaging activities in our society — smoking, drunk driving, making sure you’re wearing seat belts — typically we’ve made huge strides over the past 20 or 30 years by changing people’s attitudes. And on drugs, I think that a lot of times we’ve been so focused on arrests, incarceration, interdiction, that we don’t spend as much time thinking about how do we shrink demand. And this is something that, within the White House, we are looking at very carefully.

Some of this requires shifting resources, being strategic, where does it make sense for us to really focus on interdiction? We have to go after drug cartels that not only are selling drugs but also creating havoc … for example, along the U.S.-Mexican border. But are there ways that we can also shrink demand and … in some cities, for example, it may take six months for you to get into a drug treatment program. Well, if you’re trying to kick a habit and somebody says to you, Well, come back in six months, that’s pretty discouraging. So we’ve gotta do more in figuring  out how we can get some more resources on that end of it, and also look at what we’re doing when we have first-time nonviolent drug offenders — are there ways that we can make sure that we’re steering them into the straight-and-narrow without automatically resorting to incareceration, drug courts, mechanisms like that. These are issues that are worth exploring and worth a serious debate.

Paris Catacombs - National Geographic Magazine

From a series of photos by Stephen Alvarez
-- see slideshow on the Nat'l Geo article

National Geo writes up the Paris Catacombs, a 180-mile quarry under the city, from which limestone was mined to build major structures such as the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Not only is the history of this underground world fascinating, but also the illicit current-day exploring, gatherings and art happening down there.

Pass the dutchie, Barack

cross-posted on Workhorse Politics

As part of a two-day campaign to talk directly to Americans following Tuesday’s State of the Union address, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time today, President Obama will answer questions via live streaming on the World View YouTube channel. Up through midnight World View invited the public to upload their video questions and to vote the most popular questions to the top of the list.

U.S. Marines battle poppies in Afghanistan

This morning, if you visit the page and filter the questions by choosing “All Questions” and “Sorted by popularity” the most popular questions at least through position number 30 (where I got tired of counting) ask about legalizing marijuana  or all drugs, or about allowing growth of industrial hemp in the United States as a green initiative (we currently import our hemp from China and Canada), and similar questions.

To ignore these questions would certainly turn the effort to respond directly to Americans’ concerns into a sham. One might think that Obama is in a bit of a spot here, but in actuality the sentiment that drug prohibition should be ended in the United States plays out on both ends of the political spectrum — Liberals and many Conservatives (or, at least, the Libertarian if not Christian Right flavor of Conservative) alike believing that we waste billions on the so-called War on Drugs, that it is not effective, that it in fact supports gang activity and causes violence, and many other reasons (supported by research, by example in other countries that have relaxed or removed prohibitions, and by the opinion of a growing body of current and former law-enforcement officials).

The question at the very top of the list, having earned far more votes than any other question, comes from a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (“LEAP”). This seasoned Officer Mackenzie Allen packs many solid reasons for repeal into his 32-second vid, and asks only whether the President thinks it is time to discuss repealing drug prohibition.




How can Obama possibly ignore answering the most popular question by far, coming from a police officer? We shall see.

Tom DeLay gets a lesson in Conservative values!

Workhorse Politics » Tom DeLay Sentenced to 3 Years

How are economists jerks? Let me count the ways …

...undisclosed conflicts of interest when economists are called upon to testify or otherwise help make critically important national policy decisions -- read the post on Workhorse Politics