Edward Bellamy was born in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. His father was Rufus King Bellamy (1816–1886), a Baptist minister and a descendant of Joseph Bellamy. His mother was Maria Louisa (Putnam) Bellamy, a Calvinist. Her father, Benjamin Putnam, had also been a Baptist minister, but had to withdraw from the ministry in Salem, Massachusetts, following objections to him becoming a Freemason.

Edward had two older brothers, Frederick and Charles. He attended Union College, but did not graduate. While there, he joined the Theta Chi Chapter of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He studied law, but left the practice and worked briefly in the newspaper industry in New York and in Springfield, Massachusetts. He left journalism and devoted himself to literature, writing both short stories and novels. He married Emma Augusta Sanderson in 1882. The couple had two children, Paul (b. 1884) and Marion (b. 1886).
He was the cousin of Francis Bellamy, most famous for creating the Pledge of Allegiance.

According to Erich Fromm, Bellamy’s novel Looking Backward is “one of the most remarkable books ever published in America.”
It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. In the book, Julian West, an upper class man from 1887, awakes in 2000 from a hypnotic trance to find himself in a socialist utopia. The book influenced a large number of intellectuals, and appears by title in many of the major Marxist writings of the day. “It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement.”

“Bellamy Clubs” sprang up all over the United States for discussing and propagating the book’s ideas. This political movement came to be known as Nationalism. His novel also inspired several utopian communities. Although Looking Backward is unique, Bellamy owes many aspects of his philosophy to a previous reformer and author, Laurence Gronlund, who published his treatise “The Cooperative Commonwealth: An Exposition of Modern Socialism” in 1884.

Read more: http://www.princeton.edu/Edward_Bellamy.html

Read Looking Backward: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/624

Indische Buurt (Amsterdam) – Photo: Zeynep Gunduz

My name is Noureddine and I am a member of the training group that deals with budget monitoring. We have examined the prospects paper for 2013. On page 26 of the bill it is stated that in 2013 there will be 197 million euros in expenses. We’ve got an overview of the financial statements of 2011, which states that the district spent 243 million euros in 2011. Are we correct in understanding that over the next three years, spending will be cut by 46 million euro? In 2016, the expenditure is budgeted at 179 million. Meaning a 64 million difference. Was that the intention?
The expenditure in the social domain in 2011 was 68.7 million euros. If you look at the budget in the perspectives note, you end up with a total of 59 million for the social domain (counted are: work, income and economy, education and youth, welfare and care, sports and recreation, culture and monuments). This means that the social issues will receive almost 10 million euros less in the next 3 years.

Introduction
Thus spoke Noureddine Oulad el Hadj Sallam, one of the participants in the experiment Budget monitoring in the Indische Buurt (Indische Neighborhood) in Amsterdam during the meeting of the Council Committee Social of the municipality of Amsterdam (city district east) in June 2012. His speech addressed the content of the municipality’s perspective paper for 2013.
Noureddine’s speech signifies a unique moment in the Netherlands. Not only because a citizen without a financial educational background commented on the expenditure of the budget made by a governmental organization. But also because it led to a change in the way the local government determines the priorities of the prospective budget for 2014; namely, in co-creation with citizens. Co-creation entails collaborative decision-making concerning the allocation of the budget by citizens and civil servants. It is an important contribution to the enhancement of civil society within the Netherlands.

This paper describes the methodology of budgetmonitoring and its operationalization via the project in the Indische Neighborhood. The 12-month pilot project was realized by The Centre for Budget Monitoring and Citizen Participation, in collaboration with E-motive, University of Applied Science in Amsterdam (HvA), MOVISIE and members of local communities in the neighborhood.

Read more: http://rozenbergquarterly.com/?p=4991

Will Eisner was born William Erwin Eisner on March 6, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. By the time of his death on January 3, 2005, following complications from open heart surgery, Eisner was recognized internationally as one of the giants in the field of sequential art, a term he coined.
In a career that spanned nearly seventy years and eight decades — from the dawn of the comic book to the advent of digital comics — he truly was the ‘Orson Welles of comics’ and the ‘father of the Graphic Novel’. He broke new ground in the development of visual narrative and the language of comics and was the creator of The Spirit, John Law, Lady Luck, Mr. Mystic, Uncle Sam, Blackhawk, Sheena and countless others.
One of the comic industry’s most prestigious awards, The Eisner Award, is named after him. Recognized as the ‘Oscars’ of the American comic book business, the Eisners are presented annually before a packed ballroom at Comi-Con International in San Diego, America’s largest comics convention.

Wizard magazine named Eisner “the most influential comic artist of all time.” Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel Kavalier and Clay is based in good part on Eisner. Also in 2002, Eisner received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Federation for Jewish Culture, only the second such honor in the organization’s history, presented by Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

Enjoy: http://www.willeisner.com/

May 1, 2013 – The percentage of the world’s population living in societies with a fully free press has fallen to its lowest level in over a decade, according to a Freedom House report released today. An overall downturn in global media freedom in 2012 was punctuated by dramatic decline in Mali, deterioration in Greece, and a further tightening of controls in Latin America. Moreover, conditions remained uneven in the Middle East and North Africa, with Tunisia and Libya largely retaining gains from 2011 even as Egypt experienced significant backsliding.

The report, Freedom of the Press 2013, found that despite positive developments in Burma, the Caucasus, parts of West Africa, and elsewhere, the dominant trend was one of setbacks in a range of political settings. Reasons for decline included the increasingly sophis­ticated repression of independent journalism and new media by authoritarian regimes; the ripple effects of the European economic crisis and longer-term challenges to the financial sustainability of print media; and ongoing threats from nonstate actors such as radical Islamists and organized crime groups.

“Two years after the uprisings in the Middle East, we continue to see heightened efforts by authoritarian governments around the world to put a stranglehold on open political dialogue, both online and offline,” said David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House. “The overall decline is also a disturbing indicator of the state of democracy globally and underlines the critical need for vigilance in promoting and protecting independent journalism.”

Read more: http://www.freedomhouse.org

See also: reporters without borders