With Love & Laughter - Jo Wilding!

Inspired by the momentary relief given to a severely wounded Iraqi child by the poking of a soap bubble, British blogger and activist Jo Wilding decides on an unlikely course of action. She'll bring a circus to the children of Iraq.

Improbable as it seems, she gathers an international crew of jugglers and clowns and spends three months in 2004 stilt-walking in schools, streets and community centers all over Iraq.

In a country with virtually no mental health facilities, she brings the only medicine she can – laughter. If this sounds frivolous, it isn't. As one father says of his shell-shocked son after a performance, "This is the first time I've seen him laugh like that – from the insides – since before the war."

Along the way, Wilding interviews everyone she can. Unembedded, unofficial, she goes where the media silence is loudest (including the battle of Fallujah) and unearths the agonized testimony of bereaved parents, unpaid, under-equipped doctors, ambulance-drivers, wounded children and even former Baathist officials.

Her ability to summon these scenes and nimbly describe their contexts in efficient, lyric prose surely places her beside George Orwell and Michael Herr (Dispatches) as one of the great war chroniclers of our time.

Don't Shoot The Clowns is an extraordinary and necessary document for anyone who wants to get a sense of the true human cost of the Iraq war, but it is more than that – a testament to and inspiration for those who seek to revive and rejuvenate a human spirit battered by shock and awe, attrition and insanity.

Wilding and her cohorts exhibit a quality too seldom in evidence these days: courage.

Courtesy: NOW Magazine

Here Vs There (3)

Here's the third installment of the "Here Vs There" series . To read the other entries in the series, refer to the link HERE.

"Observe around you and be thankful for all that you have in this transitory lifetime…
We are fortunate, we have much more than what we need to be content. Let’s try not to feed this endless cycle of consumerism and immorality in which this “modern and advanced” society forgets and ignores the other two thirds of our brothers and sisters.
Let us complain less and give more."

Here Vs. There (2)

Here's the second installment of "Here Vs There" . To read the first of the series, refer to the link HERE."Observe around you and be thankful for all that you have in this transitory lifetime…
We are fortunate, we have much more than what we need to be content. Let’s try not to feed this endless cycle of consumerism and immorality in which this “modern and advanced” society forgets and ignores the other two thirds of our brothers and sisters.
Let us complain less and give more."

Here Vs. There

This is the first installment of a slice of life comparison between Here Vs. There. By 'Here' I mean the developed countries that we comfortably sit in, often complain about and take for granted. By 'There' I obviously mean the so-called Third world(I hate that term) countries, so we shall refer to them as developing /under-developed countries. These images are meant to jolt us into action...at least ring a bell deep inside us to appreciate the little things we have in life.
This was actually an email forward that I received. Also see the afterword below the picture.

"Observe around you and be thankful for all that you have in this transitory lifetime…
We are fortunate, we have much more than what we need to be content. Let’s try not to feed this endless cycle of consumerism and immorality in which this “modern and advanced” society forgets and ignores the other two thirds of our brothers and sisters.
Let us complain and give more."

Do you believe in World without Geographical Boundaries???

Racism and Crossing Borders

Here's an excellent article on how racism is still a prevalent practice in the West. Many of us are so used to being subjected to such practices that we tend to overlook how much of a basic human rights violation this is. Read this article by a Black journalist Gary Younge, who is a UK citizen who writes for The Guardian. Although this might seem all too obvious, what are we doing about it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1995856,00.html