de Vries, Maggie. Missing Sarah: A Vancouver Woman remembers her vanished sister. 2003. Penguin. Canada.
Maggie de Vries is a writer and teacher; she is also pretty and blonde. She and her beautiful sister, Sarah, grew up in a loving family. But Sarah was a woman of colour and was harassed and tormented as she grew up in our bigoted society. She was murdered in 1998 after a short and often brutal life without developing her special writing talent.
It is the circumstances of Sarah’s death which finally shocked Canadians and made her a public figure after she vanished. Sarah had become a sex worker and an addict, following her trade on the streets Read more [...]
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de Villiers, Marq. Water. Stoddart Publishing Co. Toronto.
The Governor-General's Award Winner opens his wide-ranging account of the importance of water with a page of quotes. The one I remember is: Millions have lived without love. No one has lived without water.
De Villiers has written a comprehensive survey of global water resources and use, the effect of climate change on water and human intervention in water distribution and its geopolitical results. He writes about Canada and NAFTA, water in Africa and the Middle East. In the end he presents the necessary solutions – conservation, new technology, Read more [...]
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DAVIS, WALT & many authors. STEADFAST HOPE: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace. 2010. The Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
“For me the struggle is not between Palestinians and Israelis, nor between Jews and Arabs. The fight is between those who seek peace and those who seek war. My people are those who seek peace.” Nurit Peled Elhanan
A mainstream Christian church in the USA has taken the peace gospels of the Bible seriously and committed itself to leadership by supporting the Palestinian quest for just peace in a profound way. One part of this commitment is the production of this excellent guide to history, current situation and peace initiatives in Palestine Read more [...]
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Dangl, Benjamin. THE PRICE OF FIRE: RESOURCE WARS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN BOLIVIA. 2007. AK Press. USA & Scotland.
´The history of Latin America has been one of expropriation… Resources, and with them workers´ rights and public services have been squashed in a post—colonial free for all´.
Dangl, a young USA writer, travels through Latin America learning about the past and present history—in—the—making events of our southern neighbours. The main focus is Bolivia but he puts it into context with reports from surrounding countries as well. Recent events in this small mountainous country — the plebiscites on the elected President, Evo Morales, Read more [...] Comments Off on Dangl, Benjamin. THE PRICE OF FIRE: RESOURCE WARS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN BOLIVIA. 2007. AK Press. USA & Scotland.
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Cramer, Ben. Nuclear Weapons: AT WHAT COST? 2009. International Peace Bureau (IPB). Geneva, Switzerland.
“Military spending cannot buy a country´s peace and security. Governments eventually come to admit that, even in purely economic terms…”
Cramer is a political analyst of the arms race with experience as a journalist and as an activist on disarmament and security issues. In this facts and figures packed book published by the global peace umbrella group, IBP, he documents the cost of nuclear weapons in nine nuclear nations while acknowledging, “There are many other prices to be paid by states (and their populations) once they embark on Read more [...]
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Cox, Rebecca A., editor. WEST BANK: A COLLECTION OF GRAPHIC NOVELS. 2010. Project Hope. Canada & Palestine.
“From language, photography and art classes to summer camps and projects such as drama and mural painting, Project Hope attempts to provide a safe haven for children and youth to learn and heal the psychological traumas of the occupation.” from the introduction
Project Hope, a Canadian NGO in the West Bank, based in Nablus, has, in this unique collection, published the seldom seen or heard thoughts and creative work of young Palestinians. It is the remarkable and successful result of a project to give students at the An–Najah University Read more [...] Comments Off on Cox, Rebecca A., editor. WEST BANK: A COLLECTION OF GRAPHIC NOVELS. 2010. Project Hope. Canada & Palestine.
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Cortas, Wadad Makdisi. A WORLD I LOVED. 2009. NATION BOOKS, NY, USA.
“We dwell in many homes on earth, the dearest is the place of birth.”
By Theresa Wolfwood
This poetic sentence was one of many which Wadad Cortas´s father recited. He instilled in her a love of the Arabic language, Arabic culture and a deep love of her birth place. Her parents also believed in the education and rights of women. Cortas was well–educated and widely travelled. She was a perceptive observer of her own and other worlds; fortunately she recorded many of her reflections and memories that became the substance of this memoir.
Wadad Read more [...] Comments Off on Cortas, Wadad Makdisi. A WORLD I LOVED. 2009. NATION BOOKS, NY, USA.
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Corry, Stephen. TRIBAL PEOPLES for tomorrow’s world. 2011. Freeman Press Publication. UK.
“First they make us destitute by taking away our land, our hunting and our way of life. Then they say we are nothing because we are destitute.” Jumanda Gakelebone, Botswansa
Stephen Corry is the director of the UK based organization, Survival International; the group and he are committed to supporting indigenous, tribal peoples all over the globe. Corry has decades of experience as an anthropologist and a rights defender and he is passionate about his tribal friends. To learn more and to join this organization see: www.survivalinternational.org
When Read more [...] Comments Off on Corry, Stephen. TRIBAL PEOPLES for tomorrow’s world. 2011. Freeman Press Publication. UK.
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Cook, Jonathan. BLOOD AND RELIGION: THE UNMASKING OF THE JEWISH AND DEMOCRATIC STATE. Pluto Press, 2006. London, UK.
This book presents the background information that plainly shows that Israel´s much promoted image as a “benevolent democratic state” no longer has credibility at home or globally.
There are many reasons for this including the treatment of the Palestinian minority who live behind a ´glass wall´. Cook writes, “The glass wall like –like the “iron wall” is designed to intimidate and silence its captive Palestinian population; but unlike the iron wall it conceals the nature of the subjugation…”Thus Israel has tried through Read more [...] Comments Off on Cook, Jonathan. BLOOD AND RELIGION: THE UNMASKING OF THE JEWISH AND DEMOCRATIC STATE. Pluto Press, 2006. London, UK.
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Collen, Lindsey. THE RAPE of SITA. 1995. Heinemann Publishers. UK.
It starts with a poem full of questions that resonated in my thoughts as I read this wonderful story and forced me to examine my own behaviour and actions.
“What action for you
...Will this act
Would be moral
Make history progress
Would be true
Or allow us
Would be good
To slip back
Would be right?
Into the mud of the past?...”
Recently I ´met´ Lindsey Collen on a conference call and although I knew her interesting letters in New Internationalist, I was not aware of her novels. I immediately found Read more [...]
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Collen, Lindsey. MUTINY. 2002. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, UK.
This is another gripping story of women from the Mauritian writer of The Rape of Sita. If that book was in lush forest colours, this tense drama, set in a prison as cyclones approach, is stark black and white overshadowed by a sky of deep intense mauve of the impending tempest. The tension builds inside as the cyclone nears outside.
Three women are thrown together in a gaol cell. At first, suspicious and unfriendly to each other, they gradually develop friendship and support. They talk about their varied experiences; not too different from Read more [...] Comments Off on Collen, Lindsey. MUTINY. 2002. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, UK.
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Cockburn, Cynthia. The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender & National Identities in Conflict. ZED books, London, UK and New York, USA. 1998.
Case Studies of how women in major conflict zones, in Ireland, Israel/Palestine and Yugoslavia have come together to work together peacefully.
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