You're History!

How People Make the Difference

Michelle P. Brown, Richard J. Kelly, Michelle P. Brown, Richard J. Kelly

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN:
  9780826488985
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441130969
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book arose out of a challenge. The challenge was made by Bob Geldof to the British academic and historian Michelle Brown. Pop singers raise huge sums of money for Band Aid and touch the hearts of people from all walks of life. But to give money can be an easy way out. How does the so called intellientsia respond with their minds(not just their hearts and pockets) to the appalling disparities in the conditions of members of the human race. This a challenge that a number of notable and gifted people have responded to enthusiastically. They range from John Simpson and Martin Bell to Former President Mary Robinson and the noted US feminist intellectual Charlotte Bunch. Other noted authors include Sir David Ramsbothom, Ricardo Navarro, Founder of the Friends of the Earth and Simon Counsell, Director of The Rainforest Foundation. Ultimately the purpose of this book is to make people think and connect wires, to encourage them to question their own place within the world , to acknowledge personal and collective responsibility and to discuss a range of situations and issues that have been changed by individuals. The book is also published to coimcide with Britian's Presidenct of the G8 and EU and ther associated drive to focus on issues of global social justice through the newly established Commission for Africa.

Table of contents

• Contents
• A Poet's Response: De Rong Radio
• Contributors
• Foreword: From Live Aid to Live 8
• Preface: the UN Millennium Campaign
• Introduction: History in the making
• Making Poverty History
• The UN Declaration of Human Rights, printed with comments
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• 'It's Positively Medieval': Challenging Some Preconceptions of History
• Inequality: A Modest Proposal?
• The Other, Man-made Tsunami
• Africa, the Crisis Continent?
• How the Modern-day Missionaries Called 'Human Rights Activists' Help Wreak Havoc in Africa
• Twenty Years with AIDS
• Reviving Democracy
• Celebrating the Heroes of Democracy
• Cinema in Control and Conscience: Moviemakers from 'Double V' to McCarthyism
• Time to Make War History As Well
• Islam: Clash or Dialogue of Civilizations?
• Conflict and Personal Liberty
• What Price Imprisonment?
• 'Places Without a Future': the Jarrow March and the Great Depression
• Reporters on the Line: Risk Taking and Conscience in the Former Soviet Union
• The Media's Fault?
• Genocide: the Violence and the Silence
• Change – and North Korea: Is Aid Really Making a Difference?
• The Dregs in the Pot of Gold: the Irish Experience of Exchanging Dignity for Racism
• Silent Suffering, Stoic Resistance: Human Rights Abuses of Women and Children in Latin America
• Pious Aspiration or a Tool for Change? The Significance of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
• The Politics of Sexuality: Faith – the Final Frontier?
• Surviving Ourselves: Environment, Society and the Future of Our Civilization
• Greenbacks in the Garden of Eden: an Essay on How Not to Save the Rainforests
• Ourselves and Other Animals: the Ethics of Farming
• The Human Race – a Marathon, not a Sprint: the Millennium Development Goals and their Ethos
• Appendices: 'So you think you know about...?'