My Visit With GADDAFI

by

Kimberly Butler

Director, producer, photographer; founder, One Love Productions

Posted: February 24, 2011 04:31 PM

It started innocently enough: a phone call from Ida Astute, Photo Editor at ABC, with an assignment.

But, the voice on the other end of the line was hesitant.

"Kim, I don't know if you want to, it's OK to say no... Barbara is interviewing Gaddafi." It was 1989, and I was Barbara Walters' photographer for several years.

Reagan had put a missile into his living room in response the Berlin Discothèque bombings.

And he had agreed to do an interview. His PR machine was up and running overtime looking for outlets. He wanted to show the world he was just a regular guy, one of the people.

I said yes before she could finish speaking. People asked, aren't you scared? Are you crazy? A definitive yes to both questions. But no one asked why I would want to go to such a volatile place. Honestly, it's the juice. I love being a witness to history. Dangerous but not boring. I could stay home, take safe assignments, and get hit by a bus.

I Met MALCOLM X Once

15 years ago as fate has put it, I met Malcolm X at Metro Jaya Sinar Kota, K Lumpur. Now Metro Jaya has relocated to I-don't-know-where and been replaced by Pasaraya Mydin.

That was the first time I met him as he was displayed on the book shelf, priced at RM23.90. Afterwards I went home with Malcolm X: As They Knew Him clutched under my armpit. I've became a fan ever since and I've 'Like' him many, many times.

The article below which published by Harakah recently is a good read as an eye opener for those who does'nt have an inkling about who is this Brother Minister Malcolm.

~ libanglibu

Remembering Life and Legacy of Malcolm X
by Zainab Cheema / Crescent International

February 21, 2011 marks the 46th anniversary of Malcolm X’s martyrdom (real name El-Hajj Malik Shabazz), the task of tabulating his political legacy is a rather delicate enterprise. In US cinematic culture, he is perhaps known best from Spike Lee’s 1992 film, recently selected for the National Film Registry. (Even as the Academy Awards continue to shun Spike, it’s nice that the Library of Congress finally recognized his magnus opus as a great film).

I used to teach the Lee film to US students, as a way of re-introducing them to streams of experience and resistance that have been shunted off from US public consciousness. For, it is a fact undeniable that in the mainstream American narrative, Malcolm X has been sidelined in favor of Martin Luther King, whose own life has been frozen in time at the 1964 March on Washington and “I Have a Dream” speech. (MLK’s clips about racial harmony in the US are endlessly replayed, but his later stands on US accountability to the African American underclass and war-stricken Vietnamese get deleted).

Since Malcolm X, through the evolution of his thought, believed in calling a spade a spade — or as he said, “truth is truth” — he is still blacklisted in US memory-making as an angry racist. “The angriest black man in America” as the press called him at the time, a view which has crystallized into a fact he mourned in the seminal Autobiography of Malcolm X, his life’s account narrated to and published by the writer Alex Haley.

Non-Malays Are Deserting National School

This article appeared in The Nut Graph a few months ago ad I see it merits a republishing in my pages in the light of the 'brain drain' problem 1Malaya is facing.

What makes the top talents leaving our shores? It may starts at our schools.

~ libanglibu

The Nut Graph

"Initially, I had worries about her (my seven-year-old) fitting in but I think she's going to be okay," Ann says, recounting how her daughter picked up Mandarin after only a month. Ann is not the only non-Chinese Malaysian parent sending her children to Chinese vernacular schools.

Indeed, though the statistics may be scarce, it would seem that there is an annual increase in the number of non-Chinese Malaysians who are being enrolled in these vernacular schools. But why are parents opting for Chinese vernacular schools and not national schools?

read more here..