Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012
A Poet of Unswerving Vision at the Forefront of Feminism
For Ms. Rich, the personal, the political and the poetical were indissolubly linked; her body of work can be read as a series of urgent dispatches from the front. While some critics called her poetry polemical, she remained celebrated for the unflagging intensity of her vision, and for the constant formal reinvention that kept her verse — often jagged and colloquial, sometimes purposefully shocking, always controlled in tone, diction and pacing — sounding like that of few other poets.
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NHK World broadcasting Japanese earthquake anniversary coverage -
(Source: twitter.com)
A government source with knowledge of the talks confirmed that a delegation from the Kachin Independence Army met negotiators in the Chinese border town of Ruili on Thursday to try to thrash out truce terms and end fighting that has displaced an estimated 50,000 people since June 2011.
A deal with the Kachins would clear a major hurdle for the new civilian government in its drive towards “everlasting peace” after decades of stop-start fighting in the ethnically diverse, resource-rich country.
Western nations have made a successful peace process with separatist groups operating in the country one of their main demands for lifting sanctions.
Al Jazeera English: Myanmar holds peace talks with Kachin rebels
Opinion: How India Became America -
ANOTHER brick has come down in the great wall separating India from the rest of the world. Recently, both Starbucks and Amazon announced that they would be entering the Indian market. Amazon has already started a comparison shopping site; Starbucks plans to open its first outlet this summer.
As one Indian newspaper put it, this could be “the final stamp of globalization.”
For me, though, the arrival of these two companies, so emblematic of American consumerism, and so emblematic, too, of the West Coast techie culture that has infiltrated India’s own booming technology sector, is a sign of something more distinctive. It signals the latest episode in India’s remarkable process of Americanization.
Read more at The New York Times
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According to the Journalists Union of Turkey, ninety-four reporters are currently imprisoned for doing their jobs. More than half are members of the Kurdish minority, which has been seeking greater freedoms since the Turkish republic was founded, in 1923. Many counts of arrested journalists go higher; the Friends of Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener, a group of reporters named for two imprisoned colleagues, has compiled a detailed list of a hundred and four journalists currently in prison there.
The arrests have created an extraordinary climate of fear among journalists in Turkey, or, for that matter, for anyone contemplating criticizing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. During my recent visit there, many Turkish reporters told me that their editors have told them not to criticize Erdogan. As I detail in my piece in the magazine this week, the arrests of journalists are part of a larger campaign by Erdogan to crush domestic opposition to his rule. Since 2007, more than seven hundred people have been arrested, including members of parliament, army officers, university rectors, the heads of aid organizations, and the owners of television networks.
13 million people on brink of humanitarian crisis in West Africa, Oxfam warns -
The British charity said tens of thousands of people in the Sahel region of west and central Africa could die in the coming months if the international community did not distribute much needed aid immediately.
The charity said western governments and aid agencies risked making the mistakes of last year in the Horn of Africa, where the famine may have been far less severe had there been a swifter response to the crisis as it developed.
It has been almost one year since a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck Japan, unleashing a terrifying tsunami. The wall of water caused widespread destruction, left almost 22,000 people dead or missing and triggered a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Here, examine interactive imagery of the destruction at the time of the disaster and how those areas look now.
This imagery follows on from before and after sliders published in the aftermath of the tsunami, and side-by-side street-view panoramas published late last year.
NPR: For Afghan Policewomen, Sex Abuse Is A Job Hazard -
Protection of women’s rights in Afghanistan remains a focal point for the West — and American officials regularly tout the fact that the Afghan security forces now include hundreds of women. In northern Afghanistan alone, about 300 women are serving in the police force.
But in a culture that is not fully comfortable with women working outside the home, these women face significant risks. An NPR investigation in the city discovered disturbing allegations of systematic sexual coercion and even rape of female police officers by their male colleagues.
The women at the recent training session at a huge base outside Mazar-e-Sharif hardly looked like victims as they assembled and loaded assault rifles. But none dared to give their names as they alluded to what is an open secret in the city.
![Michael Bay brings you the Daytona 500 Half Time Show. #daytona500
[ @MissDestructo | Photo ]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m033f87qkX1qhfp54o1_500.jpg)
Michael Bay brings you the Daytona 500 Half Time Show. #daytona500
[ @MissDestructo | Photo ]
When a Country Cracks Down on Contraception: Grim Lessons from the Philippines -
The U.S. is once again at battle over birth control. It started with President Barack Obama’s “compromise” on mandatory coverage for contraceptives and has evolved into national shouting match about faith, family and fundamental rights. At the center of it all is Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, a conservative Catholic who is against abortion — yes, even in cases of rape and incest — and says he “personally” opposes birth control. Poll data suggest that when it comes to contraception, Santorum is out of step with his would-be constituents; the vast majority of Americans, including Catholics, do not oppose birth control. Many do, however, back his ultra-conservative stance on abortion, making this a good time to reflect on what the U.S. can learn from the global campaign for reproductive rights.
Those who cast contraception as a private, personal matter ought to consider the case of the Philippines.
Read more at Time.com
Crisis in Syria Looks Very Different on Satellite Channels Owned by Russia and Iran -
While restrictions imposed by the Syrian government on reporting inside the country do make it difficult to verify the authenticity of claims by activists, other television networks, like the BBC, have managed to send reporters to Homs and other besieged towns to gather information and report on the situation firsthand. The coverage of the conflict on Press TV and Russia Today, by contrast, relies so heavily on interviews with correspondents seated in studios in Damascus — whose information varies little, if at all, from that on Syrian state television — that it often seems closer to ideologically driven punditry than impartial news gathering.
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“If Western countries continue to fully support Syria’s opposition, then in the end a large-scale civil war will erupt and there will be no way to thus avoid the possibility of foreign armed intervention.” —
Foreign affairs “expert” Qu Xing for China’s Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily