ecuador - Shahidul News

As Drik As Possible

Published by Shahidul Alam on January 7, 2016

The dot matrix Olivetti printer was noisy. The XT computer came without a hard drive: two floppy disks uploaded the operating system. When the electricity went (as it often did), we had to reload it. Our bathroom doubled as our darkroom. A clunky metal cabinet housed our prints, slides, negatives and files. Anisur Rahman and Abu Naser Siddique were our printers; I was photographer, manager, copy editor and part-time janitor. Cheryle Yin-Lo, an Australian who had read about us in a magazine, joined as our librarian. We offered and she happily accepted a local salary. My partner Rahnuma Ahmed often got roped in when we were short-staffed, which was often.

Climate_Migrants — Climate Migrants: “Our people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.” Alanis Obomsawin Photo Abir Abdullah from his series on Climate Change.

America?s Vassal Acts Decisively and Illegally

Published by Shahidul Alam on August 20, 2012

by Craig Murray on August 16, 2012

UPDATE (Note by Craig)
100,000 HITS IN 100 MINUTES CRASHED THE SITE. WE DON?T KNOW YET IF GENUINE INTEREST OR DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK. OUR BRILLIANT WEBHOSTS HAVE QUADRUPLED THE RESOURCE, BUT IF YOU CAN HELP TAKE THE STRAIN BY REPOSTING I WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL.
I returned to the UK today to be astonished by private confirmation from within the FCO that the UK government has indeed decided ? after immense pressure from the Obama administration ? to enter the Ecuadorean Embassy and seize Julian Assange.
This will be, beyond any argument, a blatant breach of the Vienna Convention of 1961, to which the UK is one of the original parties and which encodes the centuries ? arguably millennia ? of practice which have enabled diplomatic relations to function. The Vienna Convention is the most subscribed single international treaty in the world.
The provisions of the Vienna Convention on the status of diplomatic premises are expressed in deliberately absolute terms. There is no modification or qualification elsewhere in the treaty.

Ecuadorian military base in New York? Rafael Correa's interview

Published by Shahidul Alam on June 11, 2012

by rahnuma ahmed

Blog Rafael — Ecuador's president Rafael Correa being interviewed by Julian Assange in the latter's television chat show The World Tomorrow (episode 6), for Russia Today TV, May 22, 2012.?

Instead of titling today’s column, “Ecuadorian military base in New York?” — I could easily have settled for something else. Because Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s charismatic president, spoke of many other equally important things in his recently given virtual interview to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, for Russia Today TV (generally known as RT).

Tango

Published by Shahidul Alam on January 19, 2012

Photographs and text by Pablo Corral Vega

Life is not life without poetry. I?m talking about the license we give the world to touch us, change us, wound us, carry us away, lift us up, drag us down, save us, expose us, wrap us in warmth, strip us naked.
Uno, Enrique Santos Disc?polo?s beloved tango, says, ?Filled with hope, we seek the path our dreams have promised our desires. . . The struggle is hard, and it is long, but struggle anyway, and bleed for the faith that drives you on. Through the thorns we crawl, and in our thirst to give our love, we suffer and destroy until at last we see that we?ve no heart anymore ? the price of a punishment we undergo, a kiss we never receive, a love that left us low. . . ?
When we live with poetry, we risk our heart, our feelings, our peace. We risk our mind, our skin, our bones.
The tango is the music of immigrants ? Italians, Spaniards, Germans ? who came to the area of the R?o de la Plata in the late nineteenth century. They had left everything behind ? it?s only natural that the tango is filled with nostalgia. But it?s not an unredeemed nostalgia; quite the contrary. It?s a nostalgia that is transfigured by an embrace, that finds harbor in the dialog of bodies. The music and lyrics of the tango are pure nostalgia, but the dance itself is all sensuality, presence, exchange. Redemption.

Tag: ecuador