Monthly Archives: January 2016

“The Pedagogy of Steel” by Brazilian Poet Pedro Tierra

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Brazil, Poetry

≈ 23 Comments

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Memorial of Massacre of Eldorado dos Carajas - 17 April 1996

Memorial of Massacre of Eldorado dos Carajás – Pará – Brazil
Photo Credit: Globo (Glauco Araújo)
Learn more about the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST)

 

My Poetry Corner February 2016 features the poem “The Pedagogy of Steel” (A Pedagogia dos Aços) by Brazilian poet Pedro Tierra, pen name of Hamilton Pereira da Silva, a politician and Secretary of Culture in the Federal District.

Born in 1948 in Porto Nacional (Tocantins), Pedro Tierra abandoned his studies to join the resistance movement to overthrow the military dictatorship (1964-1985). In 1972, he was arrested and tortured for his subversive activities. During the five years he spent in prison, he lost several of his companions.

To survive and maintain his sanity, he began writing poetry. Adapting a Spanish pen name deterred exposure. He smuggled his poems to friends outside the prison, keeping them informed of life in captivity. Continue reading →

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Climate Disruption: Thought of the Week

27 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

≈ 12 Comments

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Video: Zika Virus: What you need to know

Zika Virus: Our Dystopian Climate Future

I’ve spent much of my life chronicling the ongoing tragedies stemming from global warming: the floods and droughts and storms, the failed harvests and forced migrations. But no single item on the list seems any more horrible than the emerging news from South America about the newly prominent Zika disease.
~ Bill McKibben, “The Zika virus foreshadows our dystopian climate future,” The Guardian, January 25, 2016

 

Henry Giroux on America’s Nightmare of Violence

17 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Human Behavior, Save Our Children, United States

≈ 18 Comments

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Gun owners at gun-rights rally - Washington State - 15 January 2015

Gun owners at gun-rights rally
Capital, State of Washington – January 15, 2015
Photo Credit: The Washington Times/Associated Press
[See The White House Press Release, January 4, 2016, for
New Executive Actions to Reduce Gun Violence]

Violence sells. Violence wins book and movie awards. When Jamaican author, Marlon James, won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2015 for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, I was elated. I had to read it. Set in Jamaica and New York (1976-1991), it’s a literary masterpiece on the nature of human violence and the forces that fuel it. It’s not reading for the faint of heart.

In his article, “Gun Culture and the American Nightmare of Violence,” Henry A. Giroux notes: “Popular culture not only trades in violence as entertainment, but also it delivers violence to a society addicted to a pleasure principle steeped in graphic and extreme images of human suffering, mayhem and torture.” The inculcation of such make-believe violence as a normal part of real-life, especially among our youth, concerns him. Addressing the roots of America’s culture of violence becomes more difficult. Continue reading →

Climate Disruption: Thought of the Week

13 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

≈ 8 Comments

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Infrared view of natural gas leak – Aliso Canyon Storage Facility
Southern California Gas Company – January 6, 2016

California’s 1,200 Tons Methane a Day Leak

California is facing the largest natural gas leak ever recorded. The leak has displaced over 2,000 families in Porter Ranch, a neighborhood about 25 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. It’s caused evacuations and forced two schools to close. And it’s been going on for two months.
~ Learn more about the leak at Environmental Defense Fund

Brazil’s woes to persist in 2016

10 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Brazil, Economy and Finance

≈ 14 Comments

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Brazil President Dilma Rousseff - Planalto Palace - Brasilia - September 2015

Brazil President Dilma Rousseff
Planalto Palace – Brasilia – September 2015
Photo Credit: Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino

Since Brazil lost the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the country has endured even more woes that now threaten the upcoming Rio 2016 Olympics.

Fallout from ongoing investigations into the Petrobras graft scandal aggravated an already sputtering economy, partly due to a weak global commodity market. The government’s efforts to cut public spending hit workers hard, sending them into the streets in protest. Riding on the wave of public discontent, the right-wing opposition party called for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. This has further increased the country’s political instability. Continue reading →

“History Shelves” – Poem by Caribbean-American Poet Sassy Ross

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Poetry

≈ 8 Comments

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Father-and-Daughter-Silhouette

Father and Daughter
Photo Credit: Parent Cue

My Poetry Corner January 2016 features the poem “History Shelves” by Caribbean-American poet Sassy Ross. Born in St. Lucia, at the age of ten, she moved to the USA where she lives in New York City. From a sample of fifteen of her poems, recently published in Coming Up Hot: Eight New Poets from the Caribbean by Peekash Press, this poem explores the poet’s troubled relationship with her father. Using the bookcase filled with “books dense as stone tablets / on a pharaoh’s tomb,” in their family room, Ross recalls those early years of their history together.

The poet’s memory of her father is enmeshed with the drug culture in the Caribbean in the 1980s. In her poem “The Rottweiler,” she and her mother go in search of her father the drug addict. Late at night, their Rottweiler alerts them when her father returns home like “a thief who had his own set of keys.” Continue reading →