I don’t care about the money. I just want to know why the prosecutors who hid evidence, sent me to prison for something I didn’t do and nearly had me killed are not in jail themselves. There were no ethics charges against them, no criminal charges, no one was fired and now, according to the Supreme Court, no one can be sued.
A appalling as this verdict is for justice in this case we are lucky that Mr. Thompson is far more generous than the Supreme Court. In the spirit of the Good Friday death penalty actions I used to organize on my church lawn, take a moment to find out about the organization for exonerees, Resurrection after Exoneration, he started by watching the video below, learn more at the Resurrection after Exoneration website...
I've waited a few days after the big scandal regarding Greg Mortenson's books (we've read both Greg Mortenson's Stones into Schools and Three Cups of Tea) and his non-profit work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to see what the fallout would be. Now I think I have a few useful links to share as we try to make sense out of the story. First, of course there is the original 60 Minutes story and Jon Kraukauer's piece for Byliner. Mortenson has responded via the Central Asia Institute's website and this interview in Outside. The news for Mortenson gets worse with the Montana Attorney General's office investigating and lawsuits in the wind.
For a more mixed view of Greg Mortenson and CAI from those who have met him and visited his schools, check out this this reaction from a reporter for MinnPost and the NYT editorial by Nick Kristof, Three Cups Spilled. I also recommend, Peter Hessler's very insightful New Yorker piece, What Mortenson Got Wrong. Kristof worries about cynicism setting in regarding overseas charitable endeavors while Hessler wonders where the skepticism in the press has been for Mortenson and CAI over the past decade. I've found myself wondering, where have all those now emerging to critique CAI been all these years? I would gladly have shared that information as part of our discussion. It would have made for a lively debate!
The New Yorker's Book Bench blog comments with a sentiment felt by many readers of his books, I'm sure,
The Timestalked to a military official in Afghanistan, who said, “We continue to believe in the logic of what Greg is trying to accomplish in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we know the powerful effects that education can have on eroding the root causes of extremism.” That’s an endorsement of an idea, not a person—the hope is that the idea can survive the person who gave it life, should that person be found wanting.
For the sake of the many school children who saved Pennies for Peace in the hopes of helping children in Pakistan, I too hope the message survives the man.
For August, our mystery month, we have selected Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage,
In the interior of Brazil, landless workers battle the owners of vast fazendas. When a visiting archbishop is assassinated, Mario Silva of the federal police is called upon to investigate. Then a newspaper owner, a TV journalist, a landowner’s son, and a priest are brutally killed. In a country where dead street kids are known as “hams,” justice is scarce.
Leighton Gage has spent many years in Brazil, where he maintains a home. He also resides in Florida and lives part of the year in the Netherlands.
Today, many people are protesting the detention of the artist Ai Weiwei at Chinese Embassies and consulates around the world with a 'sit-in' homage to Ai's 2007 1001 Chairs exhibition. Check out video from the Berlin protest here. Other creative protests by artists can be found here and here. I'm pulling up a virtual chair and following up on my previous post about dissidents Ai Weiwei and Gao Zhisheng and the recent clampdown on dissidents in China and taking a look at what some of the authors we have read previously have had to say about recent events:
To appreciate Ma Jian's (The Noodle Maker) contribution, you first need to take in Ai Weiwei's show at the Tate in London:
The Tate has now incorporated a protest of Ai's detention into the exhibit. Ma Jian's editorial on the artist's detention, 'Sunflower Revolutionary', plays around with the seeds metaphor.
As many of our Loyal Readers know, our group maintains a vigilant interest in the human rights climate in China due to our on-going advocacy for the Chinese human rights lawyer, Gao Zhisheng who was 'disappeared' by the Chinese government a little over a year ago. So it is with increasing dismay that we have been observing the rash of detentions in the past few weeks. The recent arrests are tracked here by Chinese Human Rights Defenders and via this Guardianinteractive feature. Amnesty International offers actions for some of the detained individuals here. The most prominent of those detained is the artist Ai Weiwei. Amnesty notes in their press release about Ai, “If the authorities are so bold as to grab this world-renowned artist in broad daylight at Beijing airport, it’s frightening to think how they might treat other, lesser known dissidents.” Rather than moving in a direction that we hoped would shed more light on Gao's present location and health condition, the Chinese government seems determined to push a growing number of it's human rights defenders into the shadows.
Just before his arrest, I watched the PBS Frontline documentary about Ai Weiwei and I recommend it as a starting point to learn more about this important artist and inspiring activist. If you missed it, you can watch it a short segment below and the rest on the PBS website which has additional interviews, samples of his Twitter activism, and a slideshow of his art. (The Washington Post and Slate also have good slideshows) A longer version of this documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, by director Alison Klayman is planned for fall release. I expect our Loyal Readers will be eager to see it in full. Klayman was interviewed by ArtInfo after Ai's detention,
The name of your documentary "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry," and it is true, one thing that is striking is how stubborn the guy is. I wonder if you can make a general comment on the mindset that has led him to stick it out through this kind of persecution.
I really think you can describe his activist efforts, and also his artistic efforts, as tireless. I mean, he will be thorough — once he gets into something, he really gets into something. When he gets into Twitter, he is sending sometimes 300 to 500 Tweets a day. When he undergoes injustice personally in Chengdu, when the police beat him, he continues to gather information and return to Chengdu to seek redress from authorities. When the Sichuan earthquake happened and he was so moved by the tragedy, he didn't just write some blog posts about it and say that was that. He found a way to engage people, to put new information out there. He found all those children's names, and continued to post their birthdays for more than a year afterward on Twitter. When you know him a little and you see that dedication, you really understand how genuine his efforts are. Because you always have to remember, he doesn't have to do any of this. I really think that is one of the messages of the film, and its something you can see if you watch the Frontline piece I did that draws on the same material.
I've already blogged about the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, but I wanted to point out a commemorative event happening at our Loyal Readers stomping grounds at Caltech. On Wednesday, April 27th at 8:00 PM in Baxter Hall there will be a staged reading of "Voices from Chornobyl" a play inspired by Svetlana Alexievich's oral histories collected in Voices from Chernobyl, which we read a few years ago. Additional performances are scheduled at other dates and locations if you can't make it to this one. Find out more at this blog or this Facebook page.
Steve Julian interviews playwright Cindy Marie Jenkins,
What role does theatre play in the 25th anniversary of Chornobyl?
It just felt like a natural progression to me. A journalist publishes interviews of people who historically have no voice and theatre artists expand the audience with their creative reactions, spreading these people’s stories. I didn’t really have a long-term plan when I started adapting it, but once we added an audience, I saw how powerful these people’s words were. Audience members left the theater and immediately wanted a copy of the book.
Here's are excerpts from a 2009 performance at Deaf West Theatre:
Remember late last month when the Supreme Court overturned a jury verdict awarding 14 million in damages to John Thompson, who spent 18 years on death row in Louisiana before the discovery of prosecutor misconduct got him exonerated? Mr. Thompson tells his own story in a New York Times op-ed (see also Killing Time: An 18-Year Odyssey from Death Row to Freedom) and pleads,
I've waited a few days after the big scandal regarding Greg Mortenson's books (we've read both Greg Mortenson's 
by Leighton Gage,
Philip Gourevitch 
in July, I would be recommending that we read The Corpse Walker. I hope to get to it on my own. It's the least I can do.
As many of our Loyal Readers know, our group maintains a vigilant interest in the human rights climate in China due to our on-going advocacy for the Chinese human rights lawyer, 
