June Jordan

Suheir Hammad on her fb page draw me to this extraordinary US poet.

June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was a Caribbean-American poet, novelist, journalist, biographer, dramatist, teacher and committed activist. Jordan is regarded as one of the most significant and prolific black, bisexual writers of the 20th century.

poem about my rights: video - text
videos: one - two - three and more...
texts: one - two - three - four - five and more...

100 Arab Women

I came across "A Subjective Power List of 100 Arab Women" which is a response to another list, made by ArabianBusiness.com called "100 Most Powerful Arab Women 2012".

The authors of the subjective list rightly ask:

How do we define power? Influence? How do we define ‘Arab’ women? What  constitutes ‘Arab’? What makes a powerful Arab woman – industry? contribution to GDP, budget controlled or someone’s definition of what a ‘powerful’ woman should be? Whose definition is privileged? By what standards do we select?

...Still, it might be worth it to learn more about at least some of the women that I know so little about!

http://tedxmogadishu.com/speakers/

Leila Khaled

Leila Khaled, Palestinian, born in Haifa, became militant in order to attract international attention to the suffering and struggle of Palestinians.

I first heard about her through a friend, Eva, who put on her facebook page how happy she was to receive a t-shirt with Leila Khaled. I wondered who she was and explored more. There are tuns of info, but this short blog post led me to an interesting article about her from which I am copying a couple of citations.

In 1969, aged 25 and armed with grenades and handguns, she became the first woman ever to hijack an airliner, diverting a TWA flight to Damascus, where she escaped after securing the release of hostages in exchange for political prisoners, and destroying the plane on the ground.

"There is a difference between terrorism and armed struggle."

"Today freedom fighters are considered terrorists, and terrorists are considered peacemakers. The capitalists have always created instruments to make people believe their lies.
This is globalization, a new invention."

"We are against assassination, but when it is time to act, we will act, because they have assassinated us constantly for 54 years. Do you expect us to say ‘OK, we accept it’? By violence they have occupied the country, by violence we were driven out, and by violence they have established their state. As long as there is occupation there will be resistance. The Israeli government is violating international law. As long as Sharon, Netanyahu and this gang of war criminals are in control in Tel Aviv, the struggle will escalate. The bloody history of Sharon is wellknown. But his future will be bloody also. Palestinians know how to deal with such bloody people."

wiki
electronic intifada
film

Hilda Solís (US)

Hilda Solís - US Labor Minister

I heard about her when reading about Zelaya (ousted Honduras president) where Zelaya thanked to a couple of people for their support, including Mrs Solis.

Zelaya:
"On behalf of the people, we thank the International Community, the OAS, Secretary Insulza, the ex-President of Chile Mr Ricardo Lagos Escobar, and the US Labor Secretary Mrs Hilda Solís."

"...arguably the most progressive member of the Obama cabinet"
link

Hilda Solís was part of the Honduras Verification Commission, together with the former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos:

Lagos is a particularly interesting addition to the Verification Commission. In 1972, Chilean President Salvador Allende nominated him as ambassador to the Soviet Union and Congress refused to vote on his nomination. After the 1973 coup d'etat in Chile he was forced into exile to Argentina and then the United States. He returned to Chile to lead the resistance against the coup regime of General Augusto Pinochet, including the successful "vote no" referendum of 1988 that brought down the then fifteen-year-old coup regime.

There is great rejoicing in the selection of Hilda Solis and as part of the Verification Commission of the Accord. Both she and Lagos bring strong commitments to authentic democracy. Their skills will very much be needed to confront the ongoing stalling and deceptive tactics of the coup regime in Honduras. This is a step forward for President Obama to earn something already granted: the Nobel Peace Prize. Now if we would stop letting the military-industrial complex keep fueling the wars in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq, then he will get definitely deserve it.

link

en.wiki (Solis)
en.wiki (Lagos)
other
other

Sophie Scholl

A German trio (Scholl, Meinhof, Ensslin) - three women I did not know before and I was only and mainly inspired by films I saw. Germany is a country next to mine but I was not aware of these important fighters who lived not so long ago, in the 40s and 70s.
First I saw the German film "Die Welle" about a US school experiment where there is a week of autocracy class, a film based on real events. There was a scene which copied the events carried out by the White Rose movement in Nazi Germany, where one of the leading figures was Scholl (she was cought and arrested for throwing out anti-Nazi leaflets at university). Then, logically, I went to see a film about her short life and resistance movement - Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.
Meinhof and Ensslin very much continue in the line of resistance in Germany, they are almost autobiographically portraied in the film Der Baader Meinhof Komplex. I knew about RAF from the film Munich and also because of the Lufthansa plane hijacking, but I did not know any details about the group, who they were, how they started, what they fought for, how did they form their minds and what they wanted to achieve and what they caused. The film gives a good overview of this.

Gudrun Ensslin

Gudrun Ensslin - a German social activist and leader of RAF. Took no compromises and was quite militant. Radical writing and fighting against injustices and what she saw as forms of fascism. Sexual freedom. (I will write more on her later, I could not find many links..., but she is the driving source of the RAF movement, as others say, more than Meinhof.)
Blogger info / en.wiki / youtube (de)

Ulrike Meinhof

Ulrike Meinhof - a German writer, social activist and member of RAF (Red Army Faction). She wrote articles against state imperialism, like on the occasion of Shah of Iran's visit to Germany in 1967 or about the injustices of Vietnam war, moving to guerrilla writing and fighting together with Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader.
en.wiki / youtube / writings

Helen Thomas (US)

I would have asked [Bush] why—why do you

continue to support the killing in Gaza?
And that’s what we’re doing.

“The greatest sin of all in the Nazi era was silence.”
When you remain silent to the suffering and the incredible aggression
against a people, then you are culpable.

Helen Thomas is an American journalist and for the last 60 years she has reported on US presidents, she was the journalist who attended the last 10 US presidents' press conferences and was a member of the White House press corps. She is known for asking tough questions and demanding straight answers. On DemocracyNow!, after George Bush jr. gave his final press conference, she talked among others on Obama's upcoming presidency:

AMY GOODMAN: Do you expect to see a change of policy, for example, on Israel and the Occupied Territories?

HELEN THOMAS: No, I don’t.

AMY GOODMAN: Why not?

HELEN THOMAS: Because I think that Obama, during the campaign, made many promises, as every president, potential president does to Israel, that they seem somehow bounded by their promises, promises to uphold all Israeli goals.

I don’t see how the US can provide F-16s, gunships, Apache gunships, phosphorus, possibly phosphorus, and cluster bombs and so forth to kill helpless people, children who are starving to death. They control the checkpoints. They control the arrivals and departures, supplies and people. And the Americans—President Bush has remained silent to that suffering. He has blocked by a veto at the UN any stoppage of the warfare, and he continues to supply Israel.

Susan George

Susan George is a political scientist and writer on Third World poverty, underdevelopment and debt. I heard about her in the news of 07/07/2008 on Democracy Now - there were protests in Japan during the G8 summit and Susan George was among the protesters who were blocked from entering Japan, together with Lydinyda Nacpil, the Asia-Pacific coordinator for Jubilee South (more here).

More about Susan George e.g. on en.wikipedia or on the pages of Transnational Institute where she is a fellow. Also I found two youtube videos: 1, 2 and a related video on debt.

Benazir Bhutto

" Ce jour-là, elle a trop parlé... "

Benazir Bhutto - a Pakistani politician and twice a Prime Minister, assassinated in December 2007. She was in exile in Dubai and in 2007 she returned for the presidential elections. In a book by the French Eric Raynaud 'Jusqu'au bout du destin', the author noted that Bhutto delivered to CIA a plan of Al Qaida's attack of World Trade Center in ...1995, six years before 9/11, and also, a couple of days before her assassination she publicly spoke on Al Jazeera/the BBC about the death of Ossama bin Laden and his assassin. More info also here, in Czech also here and here.