"If we want to put an end to war, we need to end it at the point of where it is created each day anew: in our daily living conditions, in the constant stress of mindless and monotonous work, in the methods of profit maximizing and distribution, in offices and factories, in schools and families, in the tragedies of love, in our ideas about being either man or woman, in sexuality and love and in the cages of our professional, social and sensual life which are all far too small.

Do we wish that the youth of the world no longer go to war?
If so, we need a higher aim for life, a life worth living and better opportunities to put the power of the youth into meaningful action."
Dieter Duhm

We invite young peace workers from all over the world, people who want to dedicate their lives to a future worth living, to Tamera. This year there will be three major events:

Youth Future Village - July 18 - August 30, 2009

Young people between the ages 15 and 30 from different cultures and continents will study a realistic utopia during a six week community time. Through art, forum, spiritual work, study, political action and building trust among people, we will work on questions such as:

How will it go on after the breakdown of the imperial systems?
How is changing oneself and changing the world interconnected?
Why are all of our personal issues – revolving around love, partnership, and sexuality – of political significance?
More information at: http://summeruniversity.tamera.org/su09/index.php?id=70

Summer University "Global Grace Village - Creating Models for a Future without War" - July 29 - August 7, 2009

What do future societies which are not based on fear, domination, and violence, but instead built on trust look like? Which kind of technological, ecological, architectural, and social structures will societies, resonating with the cosmic order of life, embody? How will future societies, where children can fully trust their parents again and where lovers never have to leave each other ever again come into being?

A ten day think-tank for a future without war. With Dieter Duhm and Sabine Lichtenfels from Tamera, Portugal; Starhawk, USA; Sami Awad, Palestine; Padre Javier Giraldo, Colombia and many other peace workers.
more information at http://summeruniversity.tamera.org

Watch a short trailer for the Summer University here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0DFy9Omq_8

In the name of GRACE: Pilgrimage Through Portugal - September 27 - October 15, 2009

Led by Sabine Lichtenfels, an international group of pilgrims will take part in an existential community adventure to reconnect with the original dream of the Earth and of humankind. The pilgrimage will begin at the stone circle near Évora, a monument from an ancient peace culture. Pilgrims will walk towards Tamera, a modern peace model in development. This is an invitation to all who seek a connection between political, spiritual and community work.

In the name of all life. For a global thinking, global loving, and global acting.

Welcome!

Contact and registration: office@tamera.org
More information: http://www.tamera.org

Tamera Peace Resesarch Center´s work is based on more than 30 years of experience in building community, and in inner and outer peacework.
After 3 years of intensive peace studies, we are inviting visionaries from all over the world for a ten-day think tank to create a future without war.

Solarpowervillage, community, future ecology, peaceeducation, genderpeace, Planet Earth, water.

Global Grace Villlage
July 29th - Aug 7th 2009 in Tamera, Portugal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0DFy9Omq_8

Warm welcome !
Peter Koll
Tamera Team
http://tigurl.org/3xix8g
contact : office@tamera.org
http://tigurl.org/qfr078

Asian Peoples' Movement Against ADB

Koalisi Anti Utang (KAU), Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI), Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (Walhi), Solidaritas Perempuan, Jaringan Advokasi Tambang (Jatam), Koalisi Rakyat untuk Keadilan Perikanan (Kiara), Aliansi Petani Indonesia (API), WALHI Bali, LIMAS Bali, PBHI Bali, Frontier, Koalisi Rakyat untuk Hak atas Air (KruHA), La Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth, Jubilee South – Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (JS-APMDD), Seafish, Land Research and Action Network (LRAN), Focus on the Global South, Gerakan Rakyat Lawan Neokolonialisme-Imperialisme (GERAK LAWAN)

Denpasar, 05 May 2009

We, representative of peasants, workers, fisherman, women, human rights defenders, environmentalists, students, civil society movements who join the Asian People’s movement against ADB, gathered in Bali concurrently with the Annual Governors' Meeting of ADB which took place on 2-5 may 2009, assure that ADB will not be the answer to the current crises.
For more than 40 years, we have been witnessing and learning that ADB intervention has created food, energy, financial and social crises. We have been witnessing ADB’s full support to private sector as well as full direction to Indonesian government to follow a system that has been proven failed-free market policies. Therefore, ADB debt projects has only increase the number of the poor people in Asia.


We, the people of Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippine, Thailand, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Vietnam, India and Pakistan gather in the Asian Peoples' Summit against ADB in Renon, Bali, Indonesia, to discuss the current crises by the consequences of debt trap and ADB projects in our countries. All of the testimonies in our meeting has consolidated our voices and demand for:


Firstly, debt cancellation to ADB’s projects that are not only illegal, but also deepen debt trap. It has absorbed 20-30% state budget to pay instalment and interest that. As the consequences, our countries must cut social spending, food sovereignty, environment protection that lately create systemic impoverishment to majority of people.

Secondly, we oppose all ADB effort to privatise food, seeds, water, land, energy, marine and coastal, and social spending in Asia. Such effort will close peoples' access and control to their sources of lives and burdening people with higher living cost.

Thirdly, we condemn ADB support to private sector which has strengthen corporation monopoly to energy, fishery, agriculture and natural resource. It only increase deindustrialization, plundering state-owned enterprises and peoples' rights.

Fourthly, we oppose ADB project that has deliberately support project which has damaged environment, created social injustice, and human rights violation. Those activities will harm the peoples' sovereignty; impoverish peasants, fisher folks and especially women.

Therefore, we pledge to cooperate with communities who had become victim of ADB project in Asia to determine fair and sustainable alternative funds and alternative economy. We have proven that the sovereignty of peasants, fisher folks, indigenous people to manage their sources of living are the key to answer the crisis in Asia. We
believe that strengthening social modalities and peoples' control to natural resources are the answer to overcome the current crises.

Therefore, we propose our alternatives such as follows:
1. An economic paradigm which not only targeting economic growth but also targeting fair and equal distribution. Economic development must guarantee distribution of welfare to majority of the people.
- Transforming market economic system to solidarity economic which
will be implemented in distribution of welfare
- Opposing model of poverty eradication and residual approach model like Direct Cash Aids, National Program for Self-help Community. We support peoples' empowerment and transform it into “local institutional financial system” which not valued by money.

2. Mining Practitioners and designer in policy making in most countries never see the research object as derivative problem of complex social-ecological process. There should be essential changes, which put the context of ecological and social crisis that come with the policy making. The mobilisation of primary energy resource and its consumption should reach economic and theoritical domain. Macro economic and its change should not be the based or become exogenic element in supply model, but treated as the object which to be affected by the energy production and consumption.

3. Peoples' food sovereignty as it was redressed by La Via campasina in 1996 is a truly solution to overcome the food crisis. Food production in local and agroecology model based on family farming together with the development of local finance and a cooperative (people economic enterprises) will foster local economy, in particularly in rural area. Food sovereignty includes people’s rights to produce, distribute, and food
consumption. Food sovereignty is not against trade. However, trade must be based on solidarity of producer and consumer.

We, people of Asia hereby declaring that we are able to conduct those alternatives. In fact, so far, those alternatives have been applied in our daily struggle and organization. Government, public, international community and financial institution must learn from people’s movement on how to create bottom-up alternatives which are sustainable both for the humankind and the planet Earth.

We call the people, particularly Asian people, as well as the people of the world, to build solidarity and strengthen economic sovereignty to contest all economic colonialization as promoted by financial institutions like ADB.

News in the SolarVillage
Test village to be built in Tamera, Portugal

This year, 2009, we want to take the next big step of setting up a "test-field" for the planned TTT-Platform and the SolarVillage, which will be established on a special place within Tamera.

http://www.tamera.org/index.php?id=604&L=0

During the first four months of this year, the SolarVillage project group focused on the development of a solid and humane foundation, where trust among the coworkers can continuously go deeper, and increasingly reliable and professional working structures of communication and cohabitation can emerge.

Our next step is the construction of this “test-field” in the current “Valley Village” along the lines of the “African Village” designed by Jürgen Kleinwächter.

Our short-term goal is to set up the “Solar Power Village” technology. This technology creates synergy, is relatively simple to build, and thus represents a valuable and integral part of the overall solar system both ecologically and economically. Our plan is to try it out in practice and improve it in the daily life of the SolarVillage Project Group. This approach follows the basic idea of the SolarVillage concept, that a group of about fifty people will live an experimental life with the new technical components. The core element of the "Solar Power Village", the Energy Power
Greenhouse with the hot-oil kitchen, will be combined with a Scheffler
reflector, parabolic mirror cookers SK14, and solar ovens - all
components of the solar summer kitchen.

Apart from the production of heat for cooking, the hot oil produced in the greenhouse will also drive a Stirling engine that can produce electricity as well as mechanical energy. Later we also plan to integrate O2 combustion (according to the ideas of Horst Wagner) and a biogas system to complement these installations.

This “test-field” project is the next step on the way to developing the SolarVillage: The technology, and the communitarian way of living that we experienced during this recent four-month intensive group time, complement each other to create a single living entity. By autumn we will have tangible results and measured values resulting from this practical experiment, as well as a showcase to demonstrate the combination of these two elements that can be shown to visitors.

In autumn we will also organize a special kind of “Investors' Event” for a select group of people with broad views and financial power. We plan to give an insight into the actual daily life as it will work in and around a SolarVillage, and one goal of the event is to find investors for the continued development of the SolarVillage concept and the TTT-Platform.

Another part of this year's experiment is the integration of the nearby "Valley Garden" into the growing water landscape built in cooperation with the Tamera ecology team under the auspices of permaculture expert and “Rebel farmer” Sepp Holzer.

We kindly invite you to contribute to the manifestation of this experimental living model. The financing of the test field SolarVillage will cost about 73,000 Euro. Donations of any amount are warmly welcome.

We are also very interested in the help of experts who want to participate in the practical construction and development of this experiment. We ask those interested to contact us for further information.

Roland Luder
for the SolarVillage Project Group

http://www.tamera.org/index.php?id=604&L=0

In a traditional café in old Amman we were a band of friends laughing around apple chicha and lemon mint juice. The conversation is about identity and local dialects and each one of the Moroccan, Lebanese, Egyptian, Turkish and Palestinian friends are making jokes about how classical Arabic is becoming sterile in expressing our emotions and our changing identities, until Karim, an Egyptian film maker, took out his green Egyptian passport and tears off a page and start writing on it all the funny jokes we were making. What Karim did was a symbolic action that made me think about my identity and question the notion of reducing all what I am in a miserable travel document.

I set on my bed yesterday gazing at my green passport, remembering what Karim did and searching in every single line and shape for my identity, but was unable to find it. How could my name, my place of birth and my age determine who I am. Am I just a number in the lists of the Moroccan ministry of interior and the Schengen database. Is it said anywhere in my passport that I am a big dreamer, that I spend my nights whispering to the polar star, that I love Sufi songs or that I hate onions? So how could my being be summed up in this miserable travel document, and why do I need all the visas and the stamps of the world to move into a Mediterranean apace to which I belong? For a Moroccan like me it’s even more problematic, since I don’t feel very Arab, very European, very Muslim, very Jewish, very Berber, very Andalouisian, very African, very Maghrebine, and at the same time I feel belonging to all of these groups. So the only Identity which unites all these pieces of me is to say that I feel Mediterranean.

I deal everyday with noble concepts like dialogue of cultures, mutual understanding, or restoring trust. Therefore, even if I am one of the deepest believers in a north-south dialogue, I feel that the Euromed partnership is a chained pigeon as it doesn’t guarantee the freedom of movement for the people from the South of the Mediterranean. The mental barriers can’t collapse as long as the geographical barriers are being enhanced with electrical wires, exaggerated visa procedures, and endless checkpoints. The concept of Union for the Mediterranean itself is very problematic. Let me start by asking the simplest question: Why they didn’t call it Union of the Mediterranean? The simplest answer would be because the Mediterranean is made up of different contradicted blocks: Europe, The Maghreb, The Mashrek, Turkey, and Israel. The word Union assumes egalitarian relationships for a common cause, hence, a perception of a Union based on dichotomies of North/South, developed/undeveloped, Christian/Muslim, or European/Arab is nothing but the continuation of Edward Said’s orientalism in a modern terminology.

The Euromed or the Union for the Mediterranean are geopolitically speaking a form of ‘’imagined geographies’’ to follow the new social and political shifts which acquired after World War II. This methageographical invention is a very positive one for the people of the Mediterranean sea, since it’s their common fate to live together as it was their common past to move once and forth in the Mare Nostrum within the same civilizations. The continual exchange in terms of culture, goods, human beings is a process which no political or ideological circumstances succeeded in stopping throughout the centuries, thus, it’s a clever move to institutionalize this exchange within a framework which could tolerate even the most controversial component of the region: Israel.

From a purely realistic point of view, it is true that the nation state has the right to protect its interests by closing its borders for security reasons. Nevertheless, a humanistic project like constructing a new common civilization based on the Mediterranean shared heritage requires reconsidering the notion of the nation state itself and trying to construct a community based on common values while favoring diversity within elastic political borders. The enterprise of constructing a Euromed identity should pass through the process of imagining the Euromed community. According to Benedict Anderson 1983 “a nation is a community socially constructed, which is to say imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group”, Anderson argues that states are created from different symbols that we attribute to it. Consequently, the members of a community construct a mental image of their affinity even if they are an heterogeneous group in reality. The “imagined community” is gradually constituted by inventing common symbols such as: the flag, the national dish, the national anthem, the official holydays, the national dressing codes… etc Applied to the Mediterranean Anderson’s theory can really be an efficient way to construct a common identity by working on the mental images and highlighting different common symbols that we will not even spend a long time to find since they already exist. For example we can invent a flag for the Mediterranean, declare olive oil and tomatoes as an official dish, and foster academic research on our common anthropological and historical heritage. Anderson’s theory explains how what he calls “print capitalism” helps in consolidate the common mental images, accordingly, focusing our efforts towards producing printed press and publications will support the quick construction of our Mediterranean identity.

After spending hours meditating about the essence of identity I realized that I feel proud of my Moroccan identity with all its diversity, but I decided to put a blue sticker on my passport which reminds of the color of the Mare Nostrum saying: Mediterranean Citizen, because that’s how I feel!

Western Insurance Industry language is 100.00% linked to routines & channels of Business & Consumer routines reinforcing Crime on an Quota Anti Competitive Political & Commercial eSystem which reinforces the Stock Market, Self Destructive Hedge Fund Activity targeting Countries, People & Western Political & Commercial Competition.

Westerners don't have an Historical Record of Solving Problems, Curing Disease with an recorded intent to advocate Peace.

Western Countries need Credibility.
A Well Earth Advocates Exposure of Historical Record of War Crimes, Criminal Activity to give way to reconciliation of past Grievances between East & Western Countries before the year 2001 & now before 2010.

Now it's Time. WORLD PEACE IS ATTAINABLE.

"Be the Change." use the leverage of research & information on Illegal Systems & EXPOSE FRAUD, Exponential Exploitation to affect support for the Native Indigenous Ancestral Communities of Well Being.


Crime on a Quota was produced:
http://gknot.net/photos/v/eSystem_Territory_NarcoticsShell.jpg.html

1. Neural Network eNarcotic using Space Satellite Systems
http://gknot.net/photos/v/eNarcotic_Endocrine_WritersSystem2.jpg.html
2. Stock Market Routines
3. Insurance Industry Language
http://gknot.net/photos/v/ObjectOriented_NarcoticsTerroristStalkers.jpg.html
4. Narcotics Terrorist Stalkers
5. Hackers, Programmers, Legacy Code Experienced Vagrants
http://gknot.net/photos/v/Stupid+is+Stupid+Fact+is+Fact+is+Fact.jpg.html
6. eProgrammers of Behavior, Habits, Mannerisms, Ticks, Dysfunction, Promiscuity, Criminal Thinking, Pedophilia, Incest, Human Trafficking & Crack House Bordello routines used in Businesses & Organizations as an FAILED "Glass Ceiling" for Non Westerners.

Sideways Look at Time is 1 person's effort at Extortion, Showing Off & an Narrative of Evidence & Experiences of the UKGB Expatriate, of Hindi, IEDE EU SA CA AU NZ Ancestry &/or Citizenship.
http://gknot.net/photos/v/underwiter_AntiCompetitive_eSystem.jpg.html


Information on Alleged War Crimes & Criminal Activity here can be found at http://democracywork.net

Photos of Evidence & Narcotics Terrorist Perspective http://gknot.net/photos/

WORLD PEACE IS ATTAINABLE.

Facilitate the discussions in your Community!

Read & join the Project Page for the 1st Annual European Mutli Ancestral Multi Religious Reformation.
http://projects.tigweb.org/AWE_EUReformation

Begin your Blog Contribution to the Discussion on your everyday issues, Community Problems & Questions you have of the Youth Leadership Community with respect to the Future in your Region.

Thanks for joining the Planning Committee & this Historic Event: 1st Annual European Mutli Ancestral Multi Religious Reformation.

Sincere Regards,
Deborah Kayatani
A Well Earth
"Common Issues Uncommon People"
http://awellearth.net

Facilitate the discussions in your Community!

Read & join the Project Page for the 1st Annual European Mutli Ancestral Multi Religious Reformation.
http://projects.tigweb.org/AWE_EUReformation

Begin your Blog Contribution to the Discussion on your everyday issues, Community Problems & Questions you have of the Youth Leadership Community with respect to the Future in your Region.

Thanks for joining the Planning Committee & this Historic Event: 1st Annual European Mutli Ancestral Multi Religious Reformation.

Sincere Regards,
Deborah Kayatani
A Well Earth
"Common Issues Uncommon People"
http://awellearth.net

15th Summeruniversity in Tamera, Portugal :

Global Grace Village - Creating Models for a Future without War
Tamera Summer University - 29th July - 07th August 09

Survival is no longer a private matter, it has become a global issue.
This is an invitation to take part in a think tank and to build a vision for a future without war.

Planet Earth was meant to be Paradise. However, people seem to have forgotten it. Today we live in a time where extensive parts of humanity live in misery and destruction and ever more beings experience comparable fate on an every day basis, so it has become a question of survival to remember the grand original dream of a healthy planet, home to everything that lives.
Do we know our true power? Do we know what a small group of people following a clear vision of the future can change? Those who want to end war need a vision for peace.

After three years of peace research of the Monte Cerro Peace Experiment, Tamera Peace Research Center invites to a summer of vision building.

The vision of a Global Grace Village
How do future societies that are not based on fear, domination, and violence, but instead built on trust look like? Which kind of technological, ecological, architectural, and social structures will societies, resonating with the cosmic order of life, display? How will future societies, where children fully trust their parents again and where lovers never have to leave each other ever again, come into being? Which professions will they have and how will young people learn how to invest their strength for peace?
We call this vision of peace Global Grace Village. We assume that when the first planetary peace model is fully realized in all its depths, it will be a decisive contribution to a future without war.

Next steps of realization: Peace Research Village Middle East
Currently a group of Israelis, Palestinians, and Internationals are preparing the concrete construction of the first peace model. They will present themselves and their project. After the Summer University they will head off to the Middle East and check if the first Peace Research Village can be built there. We will also host representatives from the Peace Village of San José de Apartadó, Colombia, as well as many other guests.

Visionaries, scientists, youth activists, love adventurers:
With global crises overlapping, it is becoming evident that we are close to facing a paradigm shift; so let´s get together and learn to SEE!

Please note: You can stay longer!

Youth Future Village - Global youth summer with Mara Vollmer - July 18th to August 31st
How does a Movement for a Free Earth arise? Tamera International Youth Center invites young leaders for a 6-week intensive workshop. We also invited people from crisis areas like San José de Apartadó, a peace community in Colombia, young representatives of indigenous cultures, and people from Dharamsalla, a Tibetan exile haven in India. The gathering will serve to establish and deepen contact between cultures and religions, to awaken towards a global thinking, loving, and acting. Let's have a new love affair for a future without war.

Following the Tamera Summer University: Vision Quest with Ofer Israeli - August 12th to the 17th
A vision quest is a sacred ritual for the healing of people and Earth. The core of it will be to spend four days and nights alone in the wilderness.


Price (including Food and Accommodation): 640,- Euro,
reduced price for people up to 25, students, people from Portugal and poor countries: 320,- Euro

Young people, please note:We invest for a future. Tamera has created a contingent for 30 young people who can take part in the Summer University for the symbolic price of 100,- Euro. This contingent is meant for active and committed young people up to 20. Please apply for it until the 30th of June. Once the 30 places have been taken, you can still register for the reduced price of 320 Euro. Please only apply if you cannot come for the normal price.

For those who are interested in investing for a future: You are invited to increase the number of 30 people with a donation.

Registration: office(at)tamera.org or fon: 00351 -283 635306

register : http://www.tamera.org/index.php?id=164
event url : http://summeruniversity.tamera.org/su09/

He has no name, because people like him don’t want to have the same identity they were born with any more and decided to burn all their identity papers. He has no family, because he preferred to kill his heart and forget the voices and the faces who gave him birth. He has no fear, because he prefers throwing himself in the cold and pitiless Mediterranean Sea in a small wooden boat with other nameless shadows. Yet, he has a story which I will tell you in this post.

He studied philosophy and spent his college years between experiencing different kinds of love and defending his ideals as the head of the student union in his university. He never imagined that after his bachelor with honors and his orator talent to motivate the crowds he will end up jobless. He fought hard: went on strikes in front of the parliament to get a job, went to that IT classes he never understood, he even convinced his mother to sell her golden bracelets to open a phone shop. None of his efforts was enough to make things go better, even though he never asked for the impossible. All he was dreaming about was a job, a wife, and a small shelter to live happily. After two years of unsuccessful fighting against the harsh reality, the passionate and energetic young man he was became a motionless and depressive zombie who refuses to go out of bed.

On day, while he was busy dreaming after an overdose of weed, he heard noise in the neighborhood of a car and women laughing. He went down to see what’s happening, since he can never give up his Moroccan habit of being curious about neighbors’ lives. He saw Said the neighbors’ son who immigrated to Europe 2 years ago going out of a Mercedes accompanied by his blond European wife in the middle of his family’s yoyos and joy. Said saw him and came to say hi and told him: “if you want to get out from this situation and live like a king you must immigrate to Europe instead of losing your time here”. Then he wrote the name and the number of the person who helped him pass clandestinely to the Spanish shores. To Immigrate! Maybe that was the solution to all his pains, and if Said who has no degree or special skills can succeed why not him.

Here he is in the city of Tangier sitting on the sand and watching the lights of Europe glowing on the horizon. He started asking himself these kinds of philosophical questions he loves so much to escape from the reality. Why I was born on this shore of the Mediterranean and not in the other side? It’s only 18 Km away from here, so why they are developed and we are backsword? Why in the first place the Gods of Olympia asked Heracles to separate Africa from Europe, if Heracles didn’t separate us from this same spot called Tangier we would have been the same land? Off course his questions had no answer, so he just decided to smoke his last cigarette and burn all his identity papers to go meet the man who will pass him to Europe late during the same night.

In the small boat they were 30 pale faces, some Moroccans and many sub-saharian Africans, men, women and even a baby, all sitting tight and watching the passer maneuvering in the wild sea. He was heading towards the unknown, but still confident that if he cross that 18 Km he will find hope. He was imagining himself giving a speech in front of thousands of people staring at him and applauding each single word he says. He saw his marvelous blond wife coming at the end of the speech to congratulate him. At the moment when she was going to kiss him, suddenly, the weather changed. The strong wind slapped him and the first drops of rain swiped his illusion. The boat was becoming not stable, and the people started to panic. In few minutes he realized that they were sinking in the freezing water and that his dreams were sinking to sinking to.

After 45 minutes of fighting against the high waves, there were no crying sounds any more, he looked at Morocco from one side and Spain on the other side, they both looked grey and far with the fog, and he screamed: I don’t belong to none of these places; I prefer dying and immigrating to heaven.

About Wokai
http://www.wokai.org/f/about/index.php

Wokai is a 501c3 non-profit organization that enables Chinese people to lift themselves from poverty. Wokai is Chinese for "I start," demonstrating our commitment to helping the impoverished help themselves. Through our website, we connect contributors worldwide with entrepreneurs in rural China to help them start small businesses. We are based in Oakland, California, with core operations in Beijing. We also have active Chapters in San Francisco, Seattle and New York, with more than 80 active representatives. We rely on fundraising events, grants, corporate sponsorships and individual donors for funding. We will eventually cover our costs associated with Field Partner evaluation, monitoring and training, website development, and public outreach, through the optional 10% donation that contributors can add when funding an entrepreneur's loan.

For a more detailed description, we invite you to watch this presentation that Wokai's Co-Founder and CEO, Casey Wilson, recently gave at Google.

About Wokai

read more

What is Smart Growth?
How is Smart Growth Achieved?
Index of Smart Growth pdf's
http://gknot.net/unmdg/smartgrowth/files_smartgrowth.zip

Presentations:
http://gknot.net/unmdg/smartgrowth/presentation.zip

Smart Growth 101: Introduction to Smart Growth
Smart Growth America
A “Smart Growth 101” presentation designed for people and organizations interested in communicating the smart growth message to audiences that are unfamiliar with the concept.

EPA Smart Growth Presentation
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
An introductory smart growth presentation created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The principles of smart growth help us better manage the pace and pattern of our communities growth. We can have the benefits of growth, more jobs, a broader tax base, and a healthy economy with fewer of the costs associated with poorly-planned development.

But after decades of sprawling development, the task of reshaping our communities can be overwhelming. Many of our children have never lived in communities where it is possible to bike down the street for a popsicle. Our current zoning codes, transportation policies, and regulations have created places in which walking to school is difficult, and sometimes even dangerous.

This starter kit, funded by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, pulls together some of the best smart growth resources available, including publications, presentations, fact sheets and web sites. I wish you all the best as you strive to improve the quality of life in your community.

Sincerely,

Don Chen
Executive Director
Smart Growth America

MEKNES, Morocco - On paper, wine is 'haram,' or forbidden to Muslims, but Morocco has become one of the largest winemakers in the Muslim world, with the equivalent of 35 million bottles produced last year. Wine brings the state millions in sales tax, even though Islam appears to be on the rise politically

The gently rolling hills planted thick with vineyards are an unlikely sight for a Muslim country set partly in the deserts and palms of North Africa. Yet the grapes, and the wine they produce, are thriving in Morocco despite Islam's ban on alcohol consumption.

Morocco has become one of the largest winemakers in the Muslim world, with the equivalent of 35 million bottles produced last year. Wine brings the state millions in sales tax, even though Islam appears to be on the rise politically.

"Morocco is a country of tolerance," said Mehdi Bouchaara, the deputy general manager at the Celliers de Meknes, the country's largest winemaker, which bottles over 85 percent of the national output. "It's everybody's personal choice whether to drink or not."

The Celliers have flourished on this tolerance. The firm now cultivates 2,100 hectares of vineyards, bottling everything from entry-level table wine to homemade champagne and high-end claret; its Chateau Roslane claret is aged in a vaulted cellar packed with oak barrels imported from France. The winery now dwarfs virtually any other producer in Europe.

Wine is haram on paper

On paper, wine is "haram," or forbidden to Muslims. But Bouchaara said the firm's distribution is legal since it only sells to traders authorized by the state, who in turn officially sell exclusively to non-Muslim tourists.

Statistics, however, show that Moroccans consume on average 1 liter of wine per person each year, and the Moroccan state itself is the largest owner of the country's 12,000 hectares of vineyards.

The paradox illustrates Morocco's delicate balancing act. The rapidly modernizing country thrives on tourism and trade with Europe, but its people remain deeply conservative. Morocco's ruler, King Mohammed VI, is also "commander of the believers" and protector of the faith. Islamists authorized to take part in politics are the second-largest force in Parliament, while support for non-authorized groups is believed to be even larger.

Despite this uncertain setting for wine culture, the Celliers' owner, Brahim Zniber, is among the country's richest people. His group employs 6,500 people, nearly all of them Muslim, and revenues rose to 225 million euros last year. Its three biggest sources of income are wine production with the Celliers de Meknes, hard liquor imports and Coca-Cola bottling.

Zniber's latest ventures, in addition to a new Moroccan champagne, include plans to build a luxury hotel offering the country's first "vinotherapy" spa resort, with health-care creams and baths based on grape products.

But the group has also tested the limits of the gray zone it operates in. The wine festival it helped promote in 2007 caused protests in nearby Meknes, a deeply religious city of 500,000 run until recently by an Islamist mayor.

"The festival was an unnecessary provocation," said Aboubakr Belkora, the former mayor who was slammed by his own Islamist group, the Justice and Development Party, for halfheartedly authorizing the gathering in the center of town.

The ex-mayor said that "for religious reasons," he uprooted about 100 hectares of vineyards from his own fields but has no qualms with others making or drinking wine.

Others feel there is some hypocrisy to the practice.

Hassan, a restaurant manager, said he wasn't allowed a license to serve alcoholic drinks because he is Muslim. "But everyone knows we serve wine with our food," he said, pointing at the restaurant's patrons, both foreign and Moroccan, sipping their wine over dinner.

Another owner in Meknes, who also requested anonymity because of his practices, said he serves wine in tinted glasses, keeps bottles out of sight, and tells clients to say they were drinking soft drinks if questioned. "Police rarely come, and if they do they never look inside the glass," he said.

These practices reflect a much more lenient culture than in other Muslim countries.

27 million bottles per year

Within Morocco's more favorable context, the Celliers winery sells 27 million bottles per year, mostly inside the country. Two million bottles head to Europe or the United States and the firm is planting another 800 hectares of grapes to meet new demand from China, said Jean-Pierre Dehut, a former liquor-store owner in Belgium hired as the Celliers' export manager.

By the size of the huge new bottling plant it is building and the 450 people it employs, the Celliers is more on-par with the new, industrial-scaled wine businesses in Australia, Chile or California than with Europe's often family-owned domains. But Dehut stressed that Morocco has made wine for at least 2,500 years, since the Phoenicians colonized its coast. "This country exported wine to Rome during the Roman Empire," he said.

Winemaking soared during the French colonial era, which lasted more than 50 years until the country's independence in 1956.

By then, hundreds of vineyards planted with French vines Ğ mostly centered on the sunny plateau around Meknes in northern Morocco Ğ churned out some 300 million hectoliters each year.

The side session organized by SaciWATERs at the World Water Forum 5 called for generating visible demand for interdisciplinary studies on water in South Asia with a focus on creating a cadre of women water professionals to combat the ‘masculinity’ of current water sector

The side event titled Up-scaling IWRM Education in South Asia: Which boundaries to cross? was organized by SaciWATERs for the Crossing Boundaries Project in Feshane Lale Hall 5 at the World Water Forum 5, Istanbul, Turkey. The session evaluated the current status of water resources education, assess the demand for interdisciplinary water professionals and identify challenges, opportunities, and new initiatives in the realm of higher education for water resources in South Asia through the findings of the study titled “Strengthening IWRM Education in South Asia; Which Boundaries to Cross?”. Prof. S Janakarajan, President, SaciWATERs, welcomed the panel members and the session speakers and briefly described the purpose of the Crossing Boundaries Project, an endeavour of SaciWATERs with six partner institutions in four South Asian countries, to bring a paradigm shift in water resources management education in South Asia. Dr. Peter Mollinga, Convener, SaciWATERs, initiated the session by briefing the participants on the objectives of the study which was to review the progress of the Project’s initiative and to determine whether higher education system in South Asia was responding to the reforms generated by the Project.

Dr. Vishal Narain, Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Governance, Management Development Institute (MDI), Delhi, further elaborated on the findings of the Study in North India by tracing the changing perceptions of IWRM among water professionals and emphasized the fact that though there is a demand for IWRM water professionals in the Government sector, a visible demand still needs to be created. Dr Nimal Gunawardena, Professor, Post Graduate Institute of Agriculture, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and Steering Committee Member, Cap-Net, Sri lanka, followed with a brief presentation on the status of the IWRM Education Programme in the Post Graduate Institute of Agriculture, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Ms. Nazmun Naher Mita, South Asia Water (SAWA) Fellow, Masters in IWRM, Institute of Water and Flood Management (IWFM), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh, shared her personal experience of being one of the first female students to take up the IWRM course in South Asia with the help of SAWA Fellowship provided by the Crossing Boundaries Project.

Following this, the three panelists, Dr. Shahbaz Khan, Chief, Sustainable Water Resources Development & Management Section, Division of Water Sciences, Natural Sciences Sector, UNESCO, Paris, France, Dr. Paul Taylor, Director, Cap-Net, Pretoria, South Africa, and Dr. Joke Muylwijk, Executive Director, Gender & Water Alliance, The Netherlands, provided their comments and insights on the study. Dr. Khan shared his vision of IWRM programme gaining a stronghold in the higher education sector. However he also expressed his disappointment in the Draft Istanbul Ministerial Statement of the World Water Forum 5, 2009 which he regretfully pointed out, focused on the technical aspect of water management ignoring the socio-cultural constraints of implementing a change. He emphasized the urgent need to press the interdisciplinary approach to water resources management. Dr. Paul Taylor, congratulated SaciWATERs and the partners of the Crossing Boundaries Project for the remarkable progress made in promoting IWRM Education in region and further emphasized the need for capacity building of higher level water professionals. Dr. Joke Muylwijk lauded the report but also pointed out the lack of comprehensive gender-segregated data. The participants of the session followed with various questions and comments on the issues of gender, capacity building of not only technocrats but also of social scientists and extending the programme to other countries of South Asia especially Pakistan.

The side session organized by SaciWATERs at the World Water Forum 5 called for generating visible demand for interdisciplinary studies on water in South Asia with a focus on creating a cadre of women water professionals to combat the ‘masculinity’ of current water sector

The side event titled Up-scaling IWRM Education in South Asia: Which boundaries to cross? was organized by SaciWATERs for the Crossing Boundaries Project in Feshane Lale Hall 5 at the World Water Forum 5, Istanbul, Turkey. The session evaluated the current status of water resources education, assess the demand for interdisciplinary water professionals and identify challenges, opportunities, and new initiatives in the realm of higher education for water resources in South Asia through the findings of the study titled “Strengthening IWRM Education in South Asia; Which Boundaries to Cross?”. Prof. S Janakarajan, President, SaciWATERs, welcomed the panel members and the session speakers and briefly described the purpose of the Crossing Boundaries Project, an endeavour of SaciWATERs with six partner institutions in four South Asian countries, to bring a paradigm shift in water resources management education in South Asia. Dr. Peter Mollinga, Convener, SaciWATERs, initiated the session by briefing the participants on the objectives of the study which was to review the progress of the Project’s initiative and to determine whether higher education system in South Asia was responding to the reforms generated by the Project.

Dr. Vishal Narain, Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Governance, Management Development Institute (MDI), Delhi, further elaborated on the findings of the Study in North India by tracing the changing perceptions of IWRM among water professionals and emphasized the fact that though there is a demand for IWRM water professionals in the Government sector, a visible demand still needs to be created. Dr Nimal Gunawardena, Professor, Post Graduate Institute of Agriculture, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and Steering Committee Member, Cap-Net, Sri lanka, followed with a brief presentation on the status of the IWRM Education Programme in the Post Graduate Institute of Agriculture, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Ms. Nazmun Naher Mita, South Asia Water (SAWA) Fellow, Masters in IWRM, Institute of Water and Flood Management (IWFM), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh, shared her personal experience of being one of the first female students to take up the IWRM course in South Asia with the help of SAWA Fellowship provided by the Crossing Boundaries Project.

Following this, the three panelists, Dr. Shahbaz Khan, Chief, Sustainable Water Resources Development & Management Section, Division of Water Sciences, Natural Sciences Sector, UNESCO, Paris, France, Dr. Paul Taylor, Director, Cap-Net, Pretoria, South Africa, and Dr. Joke Muylwijk, Executive Director, Gender & Water Alliance, The Netherlands, provided their comments and insights on the study. Dr. Khan shared his vision of IWRM programme gaining a stronghold in the higher education sector. However he also expressed his disappointment in the Draft Istanbul Ministerial Statement of the World Water Forum 5, 2009 which he regretfully pointed out, focused on the technical aspect of water management ignoring the socio-cultural constraints of implementing a change. He emphasized the urgent need to press the interdisciplinary approach to water resources management. Dr. Paul Taylor, congratulated SaciWATERs and the partners of the Crossing Boundaries Project for the remarkable progress made in promoting IWRM Education in region and further emphasized the need for capacity building of higher level water professionals. Dr. Joke Muylwijk lauded the report but also pointed out the lack of comprehensive gender-segregated data. The participants of the session followed with various questions and comments on the issues of gender, capacity building of not only technocrats but also of social scientists and extending the programme to other countries of South Asia especially Pakistan.


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