polly7

polly7's Journal

January 5, 2015

Playing For Change - Connecting The World Through Music

Hello Everyone and Happy Holidays!!

This past October during the “Peace Through Music World Tour” in the Brazilian city of Curitiba, the PFC Band performed a magical night of music in front of a sold-out crowd to benefit the creation of a new PFC Foundation music school in the community.

“Stand By Me” is a song that sparked a movement, and the flame is growing higher and higher all over the world. There are moments when music transcends the darkness and shows us the light. This is one of those moments. Turn it up and share the joy with everyone you meet.

Happy Holidays to you and your loved ones from your worldwide Playing For Change Family.

One Love,

Mark

PLAYING FOR CHANGE: THE JOURNEY
Playing For Change is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music. The idea for this project came from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people.

Playing For Change was born in 2002 as a shared vision between co-founders, Mark Johnson and Whitney Kroenke, to hit the streets of America with a mobile recording studio and cameras in search of inspiration and the heartbeat of the people. This musical journey resulted in the award-winning documentary, “A Cinematic Discovery of Street Musicians.”

In 2005, Mark Johnson was walking in Santa Monica, California, when he heard the voice of Roger Ridley singing “Stand By Me.” Roger had so much soul and conviction in his voice, and Mark approached him about performing “Stand By Me” as a Song Around the World. Roger agreed, and when Mark returned with recording equipment and cameras he asked Roger, “With a voice like yours, why are you singing on the streets?” Roger replied, “Man I’m in the Joy business, I come out to be with the people.” Ever since that day the Playing For Change crew has traveled the world recording and filming musicians, creating Songs Around the World, and building a global family.

Creating Songs Around the World inspired us to unite many of the greatest musicians we met throughout our journey in the creation of the Playing For Change Band. These musicians come from many different countries and cultures, but through music they speak the same language. The PFC Band is now touring the world and spreading the message of love and hope to audiences everywhere.

http://playingforchange.com/about/

The man who inspired it (RIP Mr. Ridley):

Dear PFC Family,
2014 was a great year for growing the Playing For Change Movement all over the world.The PFC Band performed over 75 concerts in 11 countries, including a sold-out benefit concert at the Opera House in Curitiba, Brazil, affording us a chance to launch our first ever PFC Foundation music school in South America!!
Also, our latest CD/DVD, album, PFC3: Songs Around The World, is being released around the world and debuted at #1 on the Brazilian music charts.

The most valuable thing I witnessed in 2014 was when the PFC Band visited a Children’s Hospital in the city of Curitiba. Soon after we arrived at the hospital many of the parents and I where covered in tears, meanwhile Grandpa Elliott and the band fearlessly sang their hearts out for the sick children and their families.
I noticed that as we gave them the gift of music, they gave us the gift of witnessing strength, love and perseverance beyond anything I have ever imagined.
We make a commitment in their honor to build a better world through the power of music and love.
It starts with us, change from the inside out. Join us and help us to share the PFC movement with everyone you meet.

One Love,
Mark.

https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/VD2313KSud1i_mn2oWMWUhDFsQwGtxJeJfhy4E9_jzlEnbXcEbjauvQEbqQrQrzum-0RAye0NUQlM8uEqp9g2WaZpJkiVx4Zs4eQn-hLe0oPNJqNvfrUY_P2=s0-d-e1-ft#

The PFC Foundation is launching its first music program in South America in Curitiba, Brazil, thanks to the amazing work of a community that decided to take action through the power of music.

Having hosted a record-breaking PFC Day 2014 extravaganza boasting over 100 performances throughout the city, as well as a sold-out PFC Band concert for over 1,400, the Curitiba team inspires all of us and has ignited the PFC passion among the people in Brazil.

https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/clIuAHT4BLo1EvBaSBuF51bf15A9_JurwwiZeO347bTMDKbTz6R2KSMYrRH6owH9FWhVgLKCsCo7vHVcGkrUvONDmqKs_C8iDBsJo1W91qCmIF5briTwDrc7=s0-d-e1-ft#

Program Updates and Highlights 2014:

http://playingforchange.org/2014ProgramUpdate.pdf

January 5, 2015

Gag Law: Spain’s government tries to push back the tide

By Guillem Murcia On January 3, 2015

The intention behind Spain’s draconian new anti-protest law is clear: the government simply wants citizens to keep their mouths shut and stay at home.

Spain is one of the European countries that has suffered the most under the effects of the Great Recession. As of October 2014, unemployment rates stood at 24% for the general population, and a whopping 53.8% for people under 25 years of age. Timid signs of economic growth appear now and then, only to eventually collapse amongst the general feeling that Spain is one of the sick countries of Europe — or as the offensive acronym goes, part of the PIGS: a peripheral country gasping for air and incapable of recovering from the financial crash.

The public response to the crisis, besides a mild Keynesian initiative by the center-left PSOE government during its early years, has followed the neoliberal mantra: labor legislation reforms to weaken collective bargaining and limit workers’ rights, an austerity agenda and cuts on social services. Public spending is frowned upon and is severely limited by a reform of the Constitution in 2011, passed by both the Socialist and the right-wing Popular Party, which imposed a fiscal straitjacket on the Spanish budget, forcing it to comply with what would later become the European Fiscal Compact. These are only some ingredients in a mix that includes a constant stream of corruption scandals involving the Spanish elite, from top politicians to businessmen, bankers and even the royal family.

Many Spaniards are understandably angry. Amnesty International reported 45.000 demonstrations during 2012. In 2013, 4.500 took place in Madrid alone. Most demonstrations have been peaceful. Whether they involved unions and workers defending their rights, PAH activists exercising civil disobedience to stop evictions, pro-independence Catalans claiming their right to self-determination, or regular citizens demanding accountability and an end to corruption, Spaniards have fought back against injustice mainly by voicing their discontent. The Popular Party government, however, is not happy with this growing unrest.

Back before social networks and the latest technological gadgets were widespread, the media oligopoly guaranteed that protests deemed undesirable could be controlled to a certain point: those supporting them could be framed as radicals, violent rioters or nihilist thugs. Isolated incidents could be presented as the norm, or as the true intention of the protesters. But newer technologies have made this more difficult, and it is now common to see people recording the police to monitor their actions. Videos of unlawful actions often go viral a few days after the protest.

.....

http://roarmag.org/2015/01/gag-law-spain-anti-protest/

January 5, 2015

Canadian thalidomide survivors say they expect offer this month

INGRID PERITZ
MONTREAL — The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Jan. 05 2015, 3:00 AM EST
Last updated Monday, Jan. 05 2015, 4:45 AM EST

Talks are progressing between Ottawa and the Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada, which says it expects a multimillion-dollar settlement offer from the Conservative government by the end of the month.

The group wants Ottawa to make good on its promise to give 95 survivors “full support” by the time Parliament reconvenes Jan. 26. Talks are expected to resume this week after a series of “rigorous exchanges” in December aimed at creating the country’s first comprehensive aid package for Canadians hurt by the federally approved drug.

“Talks were positive,” Mercédes Benegbi, head of the Montreal-based association, said on Sunday. “We expect this deadline to be respected.”

The Conservative government supported a Commons motion Dec. 1 to support victims of thalidomide, a drug approved by health officials in 1961 and prescribed to pregnant women for nausea or insomnia. Far from benign, it caused severe birth defects such as shortened or non-existent limbs, and has spawned escalating health problems as victims reach their early 50s.

......

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/thalidomide-survivors-say-they-expect-offer-this-month/article22288083/

January 5, 2015

Stephen Harper speaks

The View from Canada

By Jim Miles, Foreign Policy Journal
Foreign Policy Journal
Sunday, Jan 4, 2015

Finally, you may not want to say it, because that “would make the situation a bit tricky,” seeing as how you only have eighteen per cent of the population actually voting for you, which in Canada’s idiotic first past the post system allows you to govern. The good conservative economic, security and foreign policies that are derived straight from the heart of corporate Republican America are good for one thing only, your ultimate dream that you stated at the beginning of the interview, “I think we’ve got the country on the right track but I would like to take some more time to put it on that track in a very permanent way.” [italics added]

That one statement is the most important of all these, expressing the megalomania of a man wishing to assume full control of all aspects of Canadian life for all time. It makes all these other issues—other than for the direct impacts of the people involved within the veterans affairs comments and the indigenous women’s comments—pale by comparison.

So what is to be made ‘permanent’? Trade agreements that place corporations above the control of the sovereign government, corporations that have no responsibility towards the environment, or their workers, or society in general (there is nothing ‘free’ about trade agreements). Trade agreements that allow foreign corporations to dominate and control our markets (ironically, China will probably get there regardless as they buy up Canada’s energy resources). The executive control of the government by way of the PMO and its unelected staff so that there is ultimately only one supreme leader. The privatization of whatever can be privatized—regardless of the value to the Canadian public outside the profit motive—for the conservative desire for profits for the corporate elite. The disenfranchisement—even more so than now—of all First Nations people, so that their land and resources can be privatized and corporatized for more profits to the elites.

One has to consider ultimately, the idea is that of “Fortress North America”, with Canada tied up alongside U.S. foreign policy directives, tied into a continental energy market that serves mainly the corporate elites and the military. True there may still be an imaginary line at the 49th parallel, but structurally we are being integrated into the imperial hegemon at a corporate level above and beyond an independent sovereign nation.

Full article: http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_68888.shtml

January 5, 2015

Because We Let Them

By Paul Street

January 4, 2015

Flash back to the 21st century and ask yourself: why does the United States’ astonishingly wealthy economic elite – so flush that the 400 richest Americans possess among themselves as much wealth as the bottom 150 million US residents – suck yet more and more money, net worth, and plutocratic power into its hands? Ten years ago, the late brilliant iconoclastic US comedian and ranter George Carlin told audiences that “The real owners” of America “are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget about the politicians….You have owners,” Carlin continued:

“They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They’ve got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.”

“But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking….They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.”

“You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they’re coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place.”

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/because-we-let-them/

January 4, 2015

2015: The Year We Build Power Together

The Year Starts With the Potential of a Major Victory of the People Over Corporate Power, but We Must Unite to Win It

by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / January 2nd, 2015

The major task for the social movement: 2015 the Year We Build Power Together.

In 2014 we saw tremendous growth of the movement across numerous fronts of struggle – worker rights and the wages, racism and policing, climate, the environment and extreme energy extraction, building a new economy and so much more. We also saw how uniting and working in solidarity is essential for success.

“Building power together” means working together as a movement of movements to build on the progress of 2014 when people created a larger and bolder movement. We build together because our issues are all connected and unified power is when we are strongest.

We have an immediate challenge in 2015 that threatens our progress. Obama and Congress are pushing to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If we don’t stop it, our struggles will be set back and social, economic and environmental justice will be more difficult to achieve. But we can defeat the corporate powers that exploit our communities if we unite and work together and doing so will strengthen us greatly.

Our Struggles Are Connected ....

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/01/2015-the-year-we-build-power-together/

January 4, 2015

Mexico Government Sends Michoacan Self-Defense Leader to Prison

Published 3 January 2015

While the Mexican state has failed to find solutions to insecurity issues in Michoacan, officials have actively been looking to demobilize the self-defense forces that sprung up to protect communities against cartel violence.
A Mexican court sentenced 26 members of a self-defense group in the Michoacan state to prison on Saturday, including its leader Hipolito Mora, following a deadly confrontation with a rival group in December.

Background: Michoacan Self-defense Forces

In Michoacan, self-defense groups date back from the 1990s, when small farmers began to organize in order to recover the lands that drug-cartels – essentially the Knight Templars.

The groups benefited from the formal support of the Mexican army, until the federal state started to consider them as a dangerous competitors in the management of national security. In early 2013, the members of the self-defense forces were urged to join the newly-created Rural Forces, aimed at formalizing a local defense force under state control.

Despite facing threats of criminalization, the majority of groups refused to demobilize and turn in their weapons, arguing that the resources of the new state-run force's remained significantly under the security needs of the region. One of their main prominent leader, Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles was subsequently arrested last June, which provoked anger many social organizations since then.

Full article: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Mexico-Government-Sends-Michoacan-Self-Defense-Leader-to-Prison-20150103-0016.html

January 4, 2015

Iranian immigrant investors shut out of provincial programs

TU THANH HA
The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Jan. 02 2015, 8:30 PM EST
Last updated Friday, Jan. 02 2015, 11:56 PM EST

Four years ago, an Iranian accountant named Keihan Pouresmaeili applied to immigrate to Manitoba. He appreciated Canada’s multiculturalism, had visited Winnipeg and wanted to see his children educated there.

Manitoba accepted his application in 2013 under a program for immigrant investors, giving him high hopes he’d be moving soon.

Five points on Canada’s new system for fast-tracking economic immigrants
Ottawa to cherry pick most desirable economic immigrants for fast track access to Canada
Cold-weather courses break ice for immigrants new to Canadian winters
More than a year later, however, Mr. Pouresmaeili is still in Tehran, his application stalled for the past 14 months, waiting for the green light from the Department of Foreign Affairs to allow him to transfer his money to Canada. Mr. Pouresmaeili, like dozens of other would-be immigrant investors from Iran, says that he is a victim of Ottawa’s economic sanctions against Iran, which curtail financial dealings between the two countries. While Ottawa has indicated the sanctions aren’t meant to punish individual Iranians, advocates for the Iranian community describe the delays faced by immigrants as an overzealous interpretation of the economic sanctions.

The delay is particularly unnerving because Mr. Pouresmaeili’s 17-year-old son, Hesan, is approaching the age where he would be conscripted into the Iranian military, which would derail the family’s plans to resettle together in Canada.

Full story: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/iranian-immigrant-investors-shut-out-of-provincial-programs/article22282232/

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced sanctions in 2010, saying they “are in no way intended to punish the Iranian people.”

Two-faced Harper's Irainian immigration policies are insane and bigoted. He's replaced Blair as poodle of the decade.

January 3, 2015

Decade of the protester? Why the uprisings are far from over

By Jérôme Roos
Source: Roarmag.org
January 3, 2015

We live in tumultuous times. Since 2011, every year seems to have brought more protests, more rebellions, more uprisings — and 2014 has been no different in this respect. Indeed, the past year has seen some of the most spectacular mass mobilizations and some of the most persistent social unrest to date. A genie has been unleashed from its bottle and refuses to go back in.

At the same time, it is clear that the days of innocence are over. There is less patience for drum circles or endless deliberations over process. Faced with a relentless assault by the neoliberal state, protesters now simply seek to secure some of the most elementary ingredients of a just, humane and democratic society. Millions have marched to demand answers in the case of the missing 43 students in Mexico, to secure justice for unarmed people of color murdered by racist police in the US, to express solidarity with the heroic Kurdish defenders of Kobani, to save the lives of hunger-striking prisoners in Greece, to resist draconian new anti-protest laws in Spain — and the list keeps on growing.

We have learned as well. We have all seen that, in many parts of the globe, the hopeful uprisings of recent years have taken a decisive turn for the worse. In Egypt, the vicious counter-revolution that took off in earnest in 2013 was solidified with the election of the US-backed tyrant Abdel Fattah el-Sisi this year, culminating in the recent acquittal of the former dictator Mubarak himself. Meanwhile in Syria, three years of civil war and state brutality have given rise to a monster — the self-styled Islamic State — which went on a rampage through Iraq and Kurdistan over the summer. In Egypt, Libya and elsewhere similar extremist forces are on the rise. Revolutions are not to be taken lightly.

In many respects, 2014 was a very dark year. Between Israel’s monstrous war on Gaza to the shooting down of a civilian aircraft over the Ukraine, and from the world’s appalling inaction in the face of the ebola outbreak in West Africa on to the thousands of migrants who drowned off the Mediterranean coast this year, there seemed to be little to be hopeful or excited about. Some of the most spectacular mobilizations, from the Euromaidan revolt in Ukraine and the royalist rebellion and military coup in Thailand to the middle class protests that rocked Venezuela, originated not from the left but from the right.

But 2014 also witnessed the steady rise of new progressive forces:

..............

http://roarmag.org/2014/12/protests-2014-global-uprisings/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+roarmag+%28ROAR+Magazine%29

January 3, 2015

Ten Reasons Why the TPP Must Be Defeated

Published on
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
by Common Dreams

byBernie Sanders

?itok=0bc5AACn

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a disastrous trade agreement designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy. It will also negatively impact some of the poorest people in the world.

The TPP is a treaty that has been written behind closed doors by the corporate world. Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process. Further, all Americans, regardless of political ideology, should be opposed to the “fast track” process which would deny Congress the right to amend the treaty and represent their constituents’ interests.

The TPP follows in the footsteps of other unfettered "free trade" agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and the Permanent Normalized Trade Agreement with China (PNTR). These treaties have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage labor around the world. The result has been massive job losses in the United States and the shutting down of tens of thousands of factories. These corporately backed trade agreements have significantly contributed to the race to the bottom, the collapse of the American middle class and increased wealth and income inequality. The TPP is more of the same, but even worse.

During my 23 years in Congress, I helped lead the fight against NAFTA and PNTR with China. During the coming session of Congress, I will be working with organized labor, environmentalists, religious organizations, Democrats, and Republicans against the secretive TPP trade deal.

Full article: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/12/31/ten-reasons-why-tpp-must-be-defeated

Profile Information

Gender: Do not display
Hometown: Saskatchewan
Home country: Canada
Member since: Sat Jul 9, 2005, 11:46 PM
Number of posts: 20,582

« Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next »