Dadaab Refugee Camp

A Somali refugee girl sits perched on a tree in Ifo camp

Brendan Bannon is a photojournalist on assignment for Polaris Images: 

"I first went to the Dadaab refugee camp, close to the border between Kenya and Somalia, at the end of 2006. Strangely enough, the camp was flooded then. The same parched ground recorded in my photographs was covered by 3 feet of water. Then, people were fleeing from the camp, not fleeing to the camp as they are today. Dadaab has become the largest refugee camp in the world, and Kenya’s fourth largest city: 440,000 people have gathered in makeshift shelters, made of branches and tarps. 

Experiencing Dadaab again last week was profoundly humbling. I was confronted with deep suffering and need. Slowing down and talking to people, I heard stories of indomitable courage and determination and of making horrible choices. Most of these people have survived 20 years of war in Somalia, two years of drought, and it’s only now that they are fleeing their homeland. They are accomplished survivors. 

One morning, I was talking to a family of ten. I poured a full glass of water from a pitcher and passed it to a child. He took a sip, and passed it on to his brother and so on. The last one returned it to me with enough left for the last gulp. Even in the camp, they take only what they need to survive and share the rest. What you see on the surface looks like extreme fragility, but it’s actually tremendous resilience and the extraordinary affirmation of their will to live." 

Paula Nelson

Click here to see other pictures of Dadaab refugee camp by Brenda Bannon

Malala's best friend continues her heroine's fight for girls' education

The best friend of Taliban shooting victim Malala Yousafzai has said she is praying for her school friend and is calling for more education for girls in Pakistan.

Kainat Riaz, 16, who was shot in the arm when the gunmen attacked her and Malala as they were returning home from school last month, told ITV: ‘I miss Malala. I am praying for Malala.’

15-year-old Malala was left fighting for her life after being targeted by Taliban gunmen on October 9 for speaking out against the militants and promoting education for girls.

In the barbaric attack, which caused outrage around the world, Malala was shot in the head and neck at point-blank range.

Both Malala and Kainat live in north-west Pakistan’s Swat Valley, which was under complete Taliban control from 2007 to 2009.

Speaking over the internet from Swat Valley, Kainat told ITV that she was not afraid to return to school after the attack and is studying hard.

The teenager said: 'Education is very important for girls and we need education. More, more, more.

Noam Chomsky - Top 10 Media Manipulation Strategies

Noam Chomsky, the distinguished American philosopher, political activist and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has compiled a list of the ten most powerful and efficacious strategies used by “masters of the world” to establish a manipulation of the population through the media.

The strategies are so well-elaborated that even the countries with the best educational systems, succumb to the power and terror of those mafias. Many things are reported in the news but few are explained.

The job of media is not to inform, but to misinform: Divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or continuous flood of distractions and insignificant information.

Journalists who have access to highly placed government and corporate sources have to keep them on their side by not reporting anything adverse about them or their organizations. Otherwise they risk losing them as sources of information. In return for this loyalty, their sources occasionally give them good stories, leaks and access to special interviews. Unofficial information, or leaks, give the impression of investigative journalism, but are often strategic manoeuvres on the part of those with position or power (Ricci 1993: 99). ‘It is a bitter irony of source journalism … that the most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the “best” sources’ (quoted in Lee and Solomon 1990: 18).

The 10 Top Strategies:


1. The strategy of distraction

The primary element of social control is the strategy of distraction which is to divert public attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.

Distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential knowledge in the area of the science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics.

“Maintaining public attention diverted away from the real social problems, captivated by matters of no real importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy, no time to think, back to farm and other animals” (quote from text Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars).

 

‘The Forbidden Education’, a documentary film.

On August 13 the documentary film The Forbidden Education will premiere online and in independent film centers. The film is a collectively funded project based on a study which spans eight Latin American countries and analyzes 45 unconventional educational experiences, closely examining the logic of modern schooling and its understanding of education. Moreover, it includes interviews with more than 90 education professionals who are applying alternative educational proposals, including the Montessori method, homeschooling, systemic pedagogy, popular education, free education, logosophical pedagogy, Kilpatrick project methods, new active schools, democratic schools, Waldorf education and the Reggio Emilia approach.

As the filmmakers explain, schools have existed for over 200 years and are still regarded as the main way of accessing education. And yet nowadays the very concepts of school and education are subject of debate in academic forums, public policies, educational institutions, the communication media and civil society. Those who challenge existing educational structures and practices agree that current models do not take nature, the freedom of choice or the importance of love and human relationships into account in individual and collective development.

Over the years, these critical reflections have given rise to proposals and practices which see education in different light, which have dared to challenge the traditional school model of education and whose ideas and experiences venture to explore The Forbidden Education.

See this documentary film online: