Vitro Nasu

Happy Mother’s Day!

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and Stanley Ann Dunham (Obama’s Mom was a free spirit.)

Myanmar Burma Cyclone and Aung San Suu Kyii’s Biographer

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Click on thumbnail images to enlarge.

How many earth days do we have left? (Alternet)

America’s unhealthy attachment to spring water. By Meghan O’Rourke (Slate)

Bad news from China - Gas guzzlers a hit in China, where car sales are booming (See previous post or see Bikers nostalgia by Zhang Hongtu)

The Energy Challenge - various articles from NYtimes

The Car of the Future (NOVA) Click on Iceland’s HYDROGEN FUEL CELLS (Chapter 2) or here.

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Photo by Eugene Hoshiko/The Associated Press
Young Tibetan monks asked for a donation as a police car parked to patrol the Tibetan quarter of Chengdu in China, Monday. Scattered protests were said to have continued in ethnic Tibetan communities in numerous Chinese provinces

France raises idea of boycotting Olympics ceremony over Tibet

“The initiative of Reporters Without Borders, which does not have the French government’s support, was made this morning,” Kouchner said. Let’s consider it.”

Tibet’s government in exile says it believes 99 people have been killed in the violence, a figure disputed by the Chinese authorities.

A great video from the Guardian

Ethnic Tibetans on horseback riot in the western Chinese province of Gansu, demanding freedom for their homeland and replacing the Chinese flag with that of the former independent Tibet

Beijing Wide Open - A Tibetan Activist Speaks Out About the Olympics

Val Foubert & Jim Wichterman taught English and Philosophy in ‘Anarchist Alley’ at Mercer Island High School. Each influenced Stanley Dunham, Barack Obama’s mother, who graduated in 1960. They collaborated in nurturing her independence of mind. (via)

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“She was a scholar who was one of the first to see about microbanking,” Neil Abercrombie says.

She was just too cool - from Dana Stevens at slate

Somewhere around the words “peasant blacksmithing,” I found myself thinking, “This man can never be president. His mother was just too cool.” American presidential mothers don’t drift bohemianly around the globe, marrying and divorcing foreigners, working for Third World development banks and discussing “esoteric Indonesian woodworking techniques” with their daughters. They are not named Stanley.

Barack Obama’s trubute to his mother (youtube)

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Obama is plugged in to America

“I need a breath of fresh air” Barack’s niece danced naked in front of a security guard, Maya Soetoro-Ng (Barack’s sister) also talked about her brave mother who loved to watch the moon.

Theres no one as Irish As Barack O’Bama
Moneygall is the village where Barack Obama’s great great great great grandfather Fulmuth Kearney emigrated from.

Obama Champon looks like a regular ramen.
Obama city in Japan has already cashed in. (See this youtube coverage in Italian)

Obama wrote the letter in English but signed it in Japanese, “Your friend”.
“We share more than a common name; we share a common planet and common responsibilities,” Obama wrote in the letter.

Different Biography (earlier at agog)

TRAILER: A Minority Report-Kosovo Minorities Eight Years…

China, Russia Baulk at Self Rule of Kosovo

Kosovo, Democracy and Ethnic Cleansing

Concern over Roma refuges

In its annual human rights report, Human Rights Watch expresses concerns over the situation of Roma in Serbia and particularly highlights the destitute condition of IDPs and forced returnees from Western Europe. This includes Roma from Kosovo forcibly returned to other parts of Serbia, where the organization points out to [sic] the lack of adequate assistance programmes placing a high burden on the local Roma communities.

Romany Journey (Photographs by Joakim Eskildsen)

(via)
Google Banksy Rat
Rat Dude is on sale.

Before Banksy there was Blek Le Rat

I am Blek le Rat. I am a French graffiti artist. I was one of the first artists to use stencils for an artistic purpose in Paris in the beginning of the 1980s—in ‘81 exactly. At first, I put rats and I made them run along the wall. I wanted to do a rat invasion. I put thousands all over Paris.

Between me and my heart there is nobody - Blek Le Rat on youtube

It is worth noting that the Rat Brigade did not discriminate on the basis of species.

Monkey on high bike
The above image from A Speculative History of Rat patrol

Chinese New Year Rat

Chinese New Year 4706, which begins Thursday, is the Year of the Rat, which holds a place of honor as the first creature in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese lunar calendar.

Porcile and Earthly Delight - last Chinese New Year post

Update:Not everyone is celebrating New Year in China
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An ordinary Frenchman was picked up as a rogue trader last week.
Was it his fault the market crashed?

(Rogue Trader was a very good film set in Singapore and one of Ewan’s best performances to date).

Banker’s Chutzpah via Truthdig commenter.

This article is about Nick Leesen who single handedly brought down Barings Bank. (The real life character Ewan played brilliantly in the Rogue Trader)

Lumière and Company - Claude Miller

- Lumière and Company (1995, original title “Lumière et Cie”) was a collaboration between 41 international film directors in which each made a short film using the original Cinématographe camera invented by the Lumière brothers.
Shorts were edited in-camera and abided by three rules: A short may be no longer than 52 seconds; No synchronized sound; No more than three takes.

Claude Miller’s ‘Un Secret’: A Jewish history lost and found in France

‘Un Secret,” a movie about ordinary Jewish people in extraordinarily savage times, is a current success with French moviegoers, and Claude Miller, who adapted the film from Philippe Grimbert’s eponymous novel, is surprised.

Claude Miller made a splash long ago with “The Best Way to Walk”, worked closely with Francois Truffaut in his early years.

What leaves you most wary during Election Season with its Polls (scroll down)

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(Janet Paparelli sent me her new year’s greeting with this image.)

Democrazy is here to stay. (Mark Young who posted this shortest blog entry is a poet from Australia)
Dogmacracy (Daisy and Spike - or Hillary vs Obama, the two chihuahuas’ one act play) now enters another round for a re-run. (They can’t raise money but they can growl and pretend better than any of the current candidates. Growling politicians is universal, here is Issay Ogata playing a politician.)
Matt has two great links on Why not outsource American politics? and Bullshit

Clinton Diebold Bump

The point is this: Voting machine security is essential to our democratic process, and remains a problem that has not been resolved.
As long as these devices have serious vulnerabilities, doubt is possible, and a healthy democracy cannot function effectively in the shadows.

He lost to Nixon in 1972, still speaks to us with the voice of reason.

And something else that turns your ear to dead meat.
David Ireland
Three Attempts to Understand Van Gogh’s Ear in Terms of the Map of Africa, 1987 (image source)
David Ireland’s 500 Capp Street: Inside And Soon To Be On The Market. (David Ireland mini retrospective is long overdue, stay tuned.)

(Directed by Alfonso Cuarón)
“The Shock Doctrine” is high lighted at agog for people who don’t have time to read.

Pakistani flag in half mast from the Guardian and Benazir Bhutto from here.

‘God help us’ - Pakistanis react

“I come from a family with rightist sympathies but we all feel as if our mother had died. She was a liberal force, a hope for a Pakistan overrun by militancy. Now there is a great vacuum.” (Nabeel Arshed, STUDENT, RAWALPINDI)
“I want to cry over the recent events. Somebody has killed my hope.
Everyone I know is feeling a personal loss, even those of us who were not planning to vote for her, and those of us who thought she was corrupt.”(ASIFA HASAN, RESEARCHER, ISLAMABAD)

Many related links from 3quarksdaily
Rippling effect of Bhutto’s death
Benizar Bhutto

Assassins from Newsgrist.

Bhutto’s Deadly Legacy (William Dahlrymple)

Photograph by Wang Ning De

Today is the 58th Anniversary of People’s Republic of China.
A Chinese film depicting Mao Zedong founding the People’s Republic of China. Title unknown (From youtube)

The heroism of Burmese, the shame of China by Rosemary Righter (London Times)

When China joined Russia last January to veto a fairly mild United Nations Security Council resolution calling on Burma to free political prisoners and improve its abominable human rights record, Beijing’s Ambassador at the UN helpfully explained that “no country is perfect” and that “similar problems exist in other countries”. Including, as he of course did not say, China.

Looking for great photos of contemporary China?
Meeting Place Photo Beijin

Dance in a Small Town - Wang Nin De (Federico WangNinde Fellini)

Muhammad Yunus, Founder of The Grameen Bank, Author, “Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle Against World Poverty, wins Nobel Peace Prize. (Read here. Watch the Nobel Prize announcement on youtube here.)

MuhammadYunus
on Charlie Rose (googlevideo-58 min 0 sec - Jun 4, 2004).
I linked Yunus in the vitro-nasu sidebar menu right after this interview; a great guy, inspirational and truly awesome.

For an update on worldwide activity in microfinance including the Gates foundation and eBay’s founder Pierre Omidyar read Millions for Millions in the New Yorker. Note Jamii Bora in Kenya started by a Swede and a Canadian.