Calendar
At The Gallery, Farringdon, London
70/77 Cowcross Street, London, EC1M 6EJ.
(near Farringdon Tube station)
note new start time at 6.45 p.m. to 8.45 p.m.
We suggest you arrive 15 minutes beforehand in order to settle in with your glass of wine.
Entrance fee: £3
(£2 concessions)
Monday September 20th
FILM EVENT ‘The Burden of Peace: Women Speak in the Aftermath of Kenya's Post-Election Crisis’ with Firoze Manji
The Kenyan election of December 2007 gave rise to widespread suspicions of irregularity, especially when the incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was inaugurated as president in a privately held ceremony. Violence erupted, with 1,000 people massacred and 650,000 fleeing their homes, but although the country's main rivals signed a political settlement to return the country to normalcy, those responsible remain free. Women bore the brunt of the attacks, from both armed gangs and state forces, and this film,edited by Anthony Kung'u and Peter Ndung'u, tells their story. Firoze Manji, the executive director and editor of Pambazuka News, which champions human rights and civil society organisations in Africa, and co-funded the production, will discuss the film.
Monday, October 4th
Stifling debate: libel laws and the price of free speech with Michael Harris and Padraig Reidy
English libel law, and the use of ‘super-injunctions’, are becoming a global disgrace, with a profoundly negative impact on freedom of expression, both in the UK and abroad. Human rights campaigners are often forced to edit and retract articles in the face of potential libel action, whilst writers such as Simon Singh, the respondent in a claim filed by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA), UK between 2008 -2009, have found themselves facing defamation suits. Michael Harris, Public Affairs Manager from the Libel Reform Organisation will outline the political campaign to reform these laws, and Padraig Reidy, the News Editor of Index on Censorship, will discuss the background to the Simon Singh case.
Monday October 25th
PEOPLEQUAKE: population myths unravelled with Fred Pearce
Many fear an unsustainable explosion in global population, but in fact the population bomb is being defused round the world by women making new choices about their own lives. By mid-century the world's population could be falling. Fred Pearce, is an international speaker, journalist and author on environmental issues, and was recently described as ‘one of Britain’s finest scientific writers’. He will explore our emerging new demography, a world of massive migration and rapid ageing, where some societies may face extinction through having too few babies, not too many. What does this mean for our environment - for our species? Fred is currently Environmental Consultant to the New Scientist, and his recent book ‘Peoplequake Mass Migration, Ageing Nations and the Coming Population Crash’ was published this year.
Monday November 8th
The US Militarisation of Latin America with Dr Francisco Dominguez
The Latin American social democratic model, which places the fight against poverty and exclusion at the centre of its policies, is perceived as a threat by the neo-liberal economic and political hegemony, and the emergence of left wing governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Cuba, and of left-leaning governments in Brazil and Argentina, has greatly alarmed the US. In response, the US has progressively militarised the region, and in addition to its many bases in neighbouring countries, has recently signed a ‘Defence Cooperation Agreement’ with the right wing government of Colombia establishing seven bases within its borders. The US Fourth Fleet has also been reactivated, and patrols the surrounding seas. Francisco Dominguez, Head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies at Middlesex University, has broadcast and published extensively on the region, and will discuss this alarming development and its implications.
Monday November 22nd
The Future of Yemen? with Professor Fawaz A Gerges
Will the crisis in Yemen, a state characterized by failing institutions, lawlessness, social and political instability, abject poverty, and foreign intervention lead to its breakup with unforeseen consequences for the whole region? Fawaz A. Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at LSE is the author of two recently acclaimed books on the Muslim world: Journey of the Jihadist (Harcourt Press, 2007) and The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge University Press, 2005). His forthcoming book is titled The Making of the Arab World: From Nasser to Nasrallah (Public Affairs) He is well known for his articles and editorials which frequently appear in prestigious publications worldwide. No armchair historian, Gerges has recently completed a field study of the Middle East where he interviewed scores of civil society leaders, activists and mainstream and radical Islamists.'
Monday December 6th 2010
Microfinance: high hopes and grim realities with Milford Bateman
Thirty years after its emergence, microfinance still lays claim to being one of the most important poverty reduction and sustainable ‘bottom-up’ local economic development policies of all. Milford Bateman explodes this myth. He shows that to the contrary, microfinance has largely undermined sustainable local economic and social development, and has essentially been valued and promoted because of its supreme ideological and political usefulness in the era of neoliberalism. Until joining the Overseas Development Institute as a senior research fellow in the summer of 2010, Milford was for many years a freelance consultant on local economic development. His book ‘Why doesn’t Microfinance work? The destructive rise of local Neoliberalism’ was published this year by Zed Books.
