Culture and Media

Palestinian hip-hop group DAM took the stage at the Ramallah Cultural Palace Saturday night in front of hundreds of fans. DAM, which means blood in both Hebrew and Arabic and is short for “Da Arabian MCs,”. The show meant to bring together artists from the West Bank in the spirit of a growing youth movement, said DAM member Suhell Nafar.

It is generally thought that separation of the powers of Church and State and an independent judiciary are new considerations and the universal humanists too may think that the Law of Political Accountability is quite new – think again – and look to Africa. Bereket Alemayehu, an organiser with Convergence of Cultures on the African Continent, introduces us to the Gada system.

We present a short amazing video of a conference recently held by Julia Bacha regarding the stories that can change the so called “confirmation bias” (or previous believes) that we all have, and help us open our minds and have a new cognitive resonance or comprehension of a fact that usually we tend to look with some prejudice. Such is the case of non-violence in Palestine.

Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation

The author Maxime Kaufman-Lacusta visited Montreal on May 16th to launch her new book “Refusing to be Enemies”. Kaufman-Lacusta is optimistic regarding the future of Palestinian nonviolence movement. The book is about diverse strategies used by different organizations to struggle against the occupation.

Costa Rican production: The documentary URANIUM 238 – The Pentagon´s Dirty Pool, produced by Pablo Ortega, wins the prize for best short film category of the First International Uranium Film Festival which ended last Saturday night (28th of May 2011) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
URANIO 238 had also won an award as best documentary in Costa Rican Movie and Video Festival in 2009.

The non-violent protests continue, and they are spreading to other Spanish cities. In Madrid’s downtown, in the well-known “Puerta del Sol” about five hundred people were camping. They were vacated this morning. This did not stop them from reconvening this afternoon in the same place. The protest is also reaching into new areas.

It was presented yesterday (on May 12th), at USP (University of São Paulo) at room 08 of the building of the Faculty of Philosophy, the field research “La conciencia inspirada en el chamanismo siberiano-mongol y el budismo tibetano en Buryatia y Mongolia”, by Hugo Novotny, independent researcher of Park of Studies and Reflection Carcana (Argentina).

Quickly and unexpectedly, Marta Lucas, humanist sculptor and ceramicist has gone into the Light. A victim of meningitis, “the sculptor of fire” as she was known in the artistic circles of the city of Mendoza where she lived, died last night. A wake took place in the Small Hall of Silo’s Message located in Don Bosco and Primitivo de la Reta.

A document published in March by UNESCO reports that more than twenty-eight million children in those countries affected by conflicts do not receive education. If rich countries transferred monies from their military spending for just six days over to education, in 2015, the objective of Education for Everyone could be achieved.

Hugo Ghiara, member of the “Mediterranean” team of World without Wars and without Violence and editor of the digital newspaper Globatium, announced a proposal which arose from the meeting of delegates from the humanist organisation WwW in Madrid. Members from 11 countries and using 8 different languages participated in this meeting. The following is Hugo Ghiara’s summary: