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1961 in Baden-Baden Germany

Legendary poet guitarists and soul rebels from the southern Sahara desert, this documentary extract features performances of ‘63′ under a tree in the desert ‘Matadjem Yinmixan’ in a tent in Tessalit, as well as a short interview with founder Ibrahim.

In 1963, shortly after independence, the Touaregs of Mali rise up against their new masters. This revolt is brutally suppressed. It is followed by terrible droughts which force thousands of refugees from Mali, Niger and Libya out on the road. It’s in the pain of exile that the Teshoumara is born. This movement proclaims the existence but also the necessary evolution of the Touareg people. This is when the guitars of the group Tinariwen first began to be heard.

A safe, friendly environment with an excellent education system for her children – that’s what Sameena Arif, a teacher from Islamabaad, Pakistan, was looking for when she chose to immigrate to Canada in 2004. She found what she hoped for in Calgary, Alberta and gives the city top marks in other areas as well.

“There are many opportunities for people in Alberta and it’s a great place to live,” said Sameena, who heard about Calgary from her uncle. “The people are very friendly, and the school system is excellent. I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve been to the United States as well, but for me, the decision to live in Alberta was an easy one.”

The first time Sameena and her family came to Canada was in 2002 to visit friends in Toronto. A year later, they visited Calgary for a month to get a taste of the western part of the country. The family returned to Pakistan for about a year, during which time Sameena and her husband divorced. In 2004, Sameena felt it was time to make a fresh start and moved to Calgary with her children.

In some ways, Canada is similar to Pakistan. The land is very green and beautiful, with mountains and lakes. But for Sameena, the things that make the countries different are what concerned her most. “In Pakistan, to be able to live the kind of lifestyle we are living now and for my children to have the kind of education they have now, I would probably have to work five jobs,” explained Sameena, whose children are now 15, 12 and seven.

Safety was also an issue. In Islamabaad, the capital of Pakistan, Sameena says she often worried about her children. “It’s scary when you have to worry that when your children leave the house they may not come back. Here in Alberta, it’s very reassuring to know my family is safe.”

Deciding to make the move to Alberta was also a chance for Sameena to become an independent woman – something she very much wanted to be. When she came to Alberta, she was 31 years old. “In my culture some people consider a woman’s life to be over when she turns 30, especially if the woman had her children at a young age like I did,” explained Sameena. “One of the best things about moving to Alberta is that I feel like my life is just beginning.” She laughs about how some Albertans referred to her as “kiddo” when she first came to Calgary. “I loved that!” she said.

But while coming to Alberta as a single woman made her feel strong and independent, it also made her feel nervous and stressed much of the time. Sameena credits the Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association for helping her make the transition smoothly. “I was looking on the Internet one night and came across the association’s website. With their help, I received counseling services, and advice about government services that could help me. Everyone has been very supportive,” she said.

Sameena encourage people from other countries to consider immigrating to Alberta because of all the province has to offer. With a bachelor’s degree in arts majoring in education, Sameena would like to get a job teaching English to adult immigrants as a way to give back to the system that helped her create a new life for her family. “A language barrier can be a major challenge for someone moving to a new country. I’m relieved I didn’t have that obstacle to overcome but if I can help make the process easier for someone else, I would love to help,” she said.

Let us know if you have any stories about how you came to Canada.

There is no prouder moment in Haiti’s history than Jan. 1, 1804, when a band of statesmen-warriors declared independence from France, casting off colonialism and slavery to become the world’s first black republic.

They proclaimed their freedom boldly — “we must live independent or die,” they wrote — but for decades, Haiti lacked its own official copy of those words. Its Declaration of Independence existed only in handwritten duplicate or in newspapers. Until now.

A Canadian graduate student at Duke University, Julia Gaffield, has unearthed from the British National Archives the first known, government-issued version of Haiti’s founding document. The eight-page pamphlet, now visible online, gives scholars new insights into a period with few primary sources. But for Haitian intellectuals, the discovery has taken on even broader significance.

That the document would be found in February, just weeks after the earthquake that killed so many; that its authenticity would be confirmed in time for the donor conference that could define Haiti’s future — some see providence at work.

“It’s a strange thing in the period of the earthquake we find the first document that made the state,” said Patrick Tardieu, an archivist at the Library of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit in Port-au-Prince. “People were searching for this for a very long time.”

Indeed, decades ago, Haiti’s leaders went hunting for a declaration they could call their own for the country’s 150th anniversary. Researchers combed Haiti’s libraries. Newspapers in the United States, which printed full versions of the declaration when it was made, were also considered a possible source.

But the originals seemed to have been thrown out or destroyed. In December 1952, the Haitian intellectual Edmond Mangonès wrote to his country’s Commission of Social Sciences to report that “the mystery of the original of our national Declaration of Independence” had not been solved. “All searches to date have been in vain,” he said.

Enter Ms. Gaffield, 26. She said she fell in love with Haiti while at the University of Toronto. It was 2004, Jean-Bertrand Aristide had just been ousted, and after a trip to Haiti, where she worked with street children, she decided to study its origins as a nation.

That eventually took her to Duke University, and last year, to the National Archives of Jamaica in Kingston. There, she found a letter from a British official who had just returned from Haiti around the time of its revolution.

“He wrote a letter to the governor saying, ‘Here is this interesting document that I received when I was in Haiti,’ ” she said. “And he said the declaration ‘had not been but one hour from the press.’ ”

The document he mentioned, though, was missing. She headed for London. On Feb. 2, she found herself poring through the leather-bound binders of Britain’s National Archives. About 100 pages into the book of Jamaican records from 1804, she came across a delicate, yellowed set of pages.

“What I first noticed was across the top it said, ‘Liberté ou La Mort,’ ” she said. There were a few differences from the accepted text of Thomas Madiou, the 19th-century historian who wrote a definitive, multivolume history of the country. Haiti was spelled Hayti in the pamphlet, for example, and in one sentence, Mr. Madiou seemed to have seen “idéux” (ideals) when the print shows it to be “fléaux” (ills).

The bottom of the last page read “De l’Imprimerie du Gouvernement.” That made it the official declaration historians had been looking for. In the hushed London library — even cameras snapping photos of important documents must be on silent mode — Ms. Gaffield could only smirk.

“Being very excited in a document reading room is a bit of a challenge,” she said. “You have to keep it all inside.”

Later that day, she e-mailed her Ph.D. advisers at Duke. They were thrilled. “It is a lost treasure,” said Deborah Jenson, a professor of French who has been overseeing Ms. Gaffield’s research. “This is really the first copy that is directly tied to the Haitian government.”

Professor Jenson said no manuscript version of the declaration with signatures — along the lines of the United States’ document — seemed to have existed. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haiti’s revolutionary leader, delivered the declaration as a speech on Jan. 1, 1804, and then had it printed over the next few months. Historians believe that he and others overlooked documentary preservation because they were too worried about another French invasion.

“They were building forts,” said Prof. Laurent M. Dubois, a historian of Haiti at Duke. “It’s part of the larger story: that Haiti knew it was going to be isolated, it knew it was attacking this broader social order.”

He said the pamphlet showed that Haiti was intent on sending out the declaration to get the world to understand its position. “This was a gesture of reaching out, of saying, ‘We have these grievances, and we have decided we have to be independent, to refuse and resist this social order we have lived under,’ ” Professor Dubois said. “They wanted recognition.”

That is exactly what some Haitians hope Ms. Gaffield’s find will bring to Haiti today. Mr. Tardieu said he dreamed of seeing the document returned to its home — “it would be the greatest gift,” he said — while others are praying that its discovery alone will reawaken the world to Haiti’s strong sense of self-determination.

“In the context of the Haitian tragedy, it is important for Haitians and the rest of the world to remember the independence of Haiti,” said Leslie Manigat, a historian who briefly served as Haiti’s president in 1988.

“We must recover,” he said, shouting in order to be heard through a phone in Port-au-Prince that cut out repeatedly. “We must find an alternative to the traditional meaning of independence, now, in the new world.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/world/americas/01document.html

Controversial U.S. political commentator Ann Coulter said she’s determined to “save the good Canadians” in Calgary and regions west from “crazy liberals,” a day after she was met by protests in Ottawa.

Coulter spoke at the University of Calgary on Thursday night, the last stop of a three-city Canadian tour. She is famous for inflammatory comments against Muslims, liberals and gay people.

Her speech at the University of Ottawa was cancelled after safety concerns amid protests on Tuesday night.

“It’s quite a country you have here,” Coulter told Evan Solomon, host of Power & Politics, on CBC News Network on Thursday. “I’m more determined than ever to turn pretty much from Calgary through the west into the 51st state now. We got to save the good Canadians.”

“Save us from what, Ann?” Solomon asked.

“From the crazy liberals. From the crybabies,” Coulter answered, sporting sunglasses. “How did Canada go from being the country that sends us all our best comedians to a bunch of whining, crying babies that can’t take a joke?”

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a historic health-care bill late Sunday that will make coverage possible for more than 30 million uninsured Americans and end discrimination by insurance companies against people with existing medical conditions.

Legislators voted 219 to 212 in favour of the landmark legislation that has been debated on Capitol Hill for a year. The bill, previously passed by the Senate, didn’t receive a single vote from Republicans. It will now go to President Barack Obama for his signing into law, possibly as early as Tuesday.

“It is with great humility and with great pride that we tonight will make history for our country and progress for the American people,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during her closing argument for health-care reform. “Just think, we will be joining those who established social security, Medicare and now, tonight, health care for all Americans.”

Following the vote, Obama said, “This is what change looks like.

“We proved we are a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges,” he said. “We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people —still works for the people.”

Overhauling of the health-care system is the most ambitious U.S. social program since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society reforms of the tumultuous 1960s and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal that emerged from the trauma of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Resolving differences

The passage of the legislation was made possible by a last-minute deal struck earlier in the day between the White House and House Democrats who were holding out over abortion concerns.

The White House said in a statement that Obama would issue an executive order after passage of the health-care bill that would reaffirm current law banning federal spending on abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s life.

Moments after the statement, leading abortion foe Bart Stupak, a Democrat congressman from Michigan, and six other anti-abortion Democrats said they would back the health-care bill.

“We’re well past 216,” Stupak told reporters, referring to the number of votes required to pass the bill in the House of Representatives.

The legislation would extend coverage to an estimated 32 million uninsured Americans, bar insurers from denying coverage on the basis of existing medical conditions and cut federal deficits by an estimated $138 billion US over a decade.

Congressional analysts estimate the cost of the two bills combined would be $940 billion over 10 years.

Amid talk of success for Obama’s efforts to expand health coverage to the uninsured, Republicans resolutely opposed the bill.

The Opposition called on the Quebec government to clamp down on so-called reasonable accommodation of minority groups after the province’s human rights commission ruled that the health insurance board has no obligation to satisfy religious or cultural preferences.

In separate opinions issued Tuesday, the commission weighed in on three cases involving people who asked that their religious, cultural or linguistic preferences be accommodated when dealing with employees of the province’s health insurance board, the Régie de l’assurance-maladie du Québec (RAMQ).

Up until Tuesday, RAMQ did accommodate such requests on a case-by-case basis, handling about a dozen a year.

Parti-Québécois immigration critic Louise Beaudoin said the commission’s ruling should serve as the basis for a new law declaring all public services officially secular — and banning all accommodation of religious preferences.

“That’s what we would like to stop: that case-by-case method of doing things,” said Beaudoin. “We have to do something.”

The blonde middle-aged woman apparently raised no concerns with her boyfriend or her neighbours on Main Street, Pennsburg, near Philadelphia.

But online she had allegedly agreed to kill in the name of holy war, believing her European looks would allow her to blend in among Swedes as she homed in on her target.

Colleen LaRose, according to a US court indictment, posted messages online under the name Jihad Jane, expressing her desire to participate in jihad, or holy war.

Arrested in October 2009, Ms LaRose had exchanged emails over 15 months to recruit fighters for “violent jihad”.

Her activities apparently came as a surprise to her boyfriend Kurt Gorman, whom she met in 2005.

Mr Gorman told Associated Press: “She was a good-hearted person. She pretty much stayed around the house.”

‘Pleasure to die for’

She looked after his father until his death in August 2009, but left their residence a day after the father’s funeral, taking Mr Gorman’s passport with her, allegedly to give to a contact in South Asia she had agreed to marry.

“I came home and she was gone. It doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

Having left the US in August, by the end of September, she had allegedly written online that it would be “an honour & great pleasure to die or kill for” her intended spouse, the indictment said.
“Only death will stop me here that I am so close to the target!” she is accused of writing.

A Department of Justice statement said Ms LaRose and five others “recruited men on the internet to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe, and recruited women on the internet who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of violent jihad”.

Ms LaRose, a US citizen born in 1963, is charged with “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, making false statements to a government official and attempted identity theft.”

She was apparently approached by others after she posted a video on YouTube in June 2008, saying she was “desperate to do something somehow to help” ease the suffering of Muslims, the indictment said.

Web images show her wearing a Muslim headscarf, but Mr Gorman said he never saw anything like that at their home, nor did she attend any religious services.

Unknown to him, she had allegedly agreed to travel to Sweden and kill Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who had angered Muslims by drawing the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog.

She denies soliciting funds for terrorist groups and of being the Jihad Jane of online postings, the indictment said.

Very few women have been charged with terrorism in the US, the Justice Department said.

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