The United States Commission on Ocean Policy (sometimes known as the Watkins Commission, after the chairman of the commission during its first gathering, James Watkins) was created by an act of the 106th United States Congress known as the Oceans Act of 2000.   The commission's mandate was to establish findings and develop recommendations for a new and comprehensive national ocean policy.  The final report was delivered in September 2004, and shortly afterwards the commission was terminated, as scheduled by the Oceans Act.

Working groups

In the course of its work, the Commission established four working groups to address the following issues:
 Governance
 Research, Education and Marine Operations
 Stewardship
 Investment and Implementation

History
The previous review of U.S. ocean policy had been conducted thirty-five years before by the Stratton Commission, published in 1969.  To account for changes in the intervening years, the U.S. Congress decided to form the Commission on Ocean Policy to conduct a new review, and develop recommendations for future ocean policy.  The Oceans Act of 2000 was passed in the Senate June 6, 2000, and become effective on January 20, 2001.

The Commission is composed of 16 members. Per the Act, the House of Representatives and Senate Majority each nominated eight people, and the President appointed four from each list.

The Commission  began its work in September 2001 with a series of nine regional meetings and 18 additional site visits in every coastal region of the United States and the Great Lakes. The Commission heard testimony from 445 experts, including many of the nation's top ocean scientists and researchers,  environmental organizations, industry, citizens, and government officials,  as well as receiving written testimony from countless others.

The Commission released its Preliminary Report on April 20, 2004, for review by the nation's Governors and  other stakeholders.

On September 20, 2004, the Commission submitted its Final Report to the President and Congress, "An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century".  On December 19, 2004, the Commission officially expired, as called for under the Oceans Act of 2000.

External links
 Archive of the Commission's web site
 PDF version of the Oceans Act of 2000
 The Commission's final report
 Naval Institute Proceedings 2001 Index Don Walsh
 1965 Coastal Zone Information Center NOAA (35 pp)
 Tales of Not-so Ancient Mariners: A Marine Technology Review from the MTS Archives (Summer 2006)

Ocean Policy
Oceanography
Environmental policy in the United States


Shaike Ophir (; November 4, 1928 – August 17, 1987) was an Israeli film and theater actor, comedian, playwright, screenwriter, director, and the country's first mime.

Early life
Yeshayahu (Shaike) Goldstein-Ophir was born in Jerusalem. His family were Masortiim, and his Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry in the city goes back to the mid-19th century.

He studied acting as an adolescent, but left school in the 1940s to enlist in the Palmach. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War he escorted convoys to the besieged city of Jerusalem, and took part in naval battles.

Career
Thanks to his comic skills he was accepted to the Chezbatron, an army entertainment troupe.
In the 1950s, he made a name for himself as a multi-talented performer. He had even recorded a few hit songs during this period.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s Ophir occasionally guest-starred in American TV shows such as Shirley Temple's Storybook and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (in the episode "The Waxwork," where he was billed as Shai K. Ophir). Ophir acted in 28 films, wrote, directed and starred in several variety shows and was an accomplished mime, appearing alongside Marcel Marceau. He reached the peak of his international fame in the title role of Ha-Shoter Azoulay (literally, Policeman Azoulay, translated as The Policeman), a film-vehicle by Ephraim Kishon which won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Film (1972) and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Academy Award the same year. He also starred in other Ephraim Kishon films, including Ervinka, Blaumilch Canal and The Fox in the Chicken Coop, and the 1973 Moshé Mizrahi film Daughters, Daughters. In 1977 he starred opposite Melanie Griffith in The Garden.

In 1985, Ophir starred in a stage adaptation of Janusz Korczak's children's novel King Matt the First, where he played seven different roles. The children's play was very successful and ran for three years. Over this period Ophir was diagnosed with lung cancer, to which he succumbed in 1987. Ophir was a theatrical director for HaGashash HaHiver. He also directed the Israeli movie Hamesh Ma'ot Elef Shahor, and wrote the screenplay for 4 Israeli movies. He wrote and performed many sketches and comedy routines, many of which are still popular in Israel today. He also did a series of Arabic-instruction TV programs that ran through the 1980s.

He also appeared in the Chuck Norris film, The Delta Force.

Personal life
Ophir was married twice and had four children, two from each spouse. His daughter, Karin Ophir, is also an actress.
Shaike Ophir, a heavy smoker, died from lung cancer in 1987.

Filmography

1956: B'Ein Moledet
1956: Ma'aseh B'Monit .... Soldier
1963: El Dorado .... Shneider
1964: Shemona B'Ekevot Ahat
1964: Hor B'Levana
1964: Dalia Vehamalahim
1966: Moishe Ventilator
1967: Ervinka .... The Sergeant
1968: Ha-Shehuna Shelanu
1969: Blaumilch Canal .... Police Officer
1971: The Policeman .... Constable Sgt. Abraham Azulai
1972: Shod Hatelephonim Hagadol
1973: Daughters, Daughters .... Sabbatai Alfandari
1973: The House on Chelouche Street .... Haim
1975: Yi'ihiyeh Tov Salmonico
1975: Diamonds .... Moshe
1977: Hamesh Ma'ot Elef Shahor
1977: The Garden .... Avram
1977: Gonev Miganav Patoor
1977: Operation Thunderbolt .... Gadi Arnon
1978: Ha-Shu'al B'Lool Hatarnagalot .... Amitz Dolniker
1979: The Magician of Lublin .... Schmul
1979: Ta'ut Bamispar .... Superintendent Moshe Cohen
1985: King Solomon's Mines .... Kassam
1986: The Delta Force .... Father Nicholas
1986: America 3000 .... Lelz
1987: Sleeping Beauty .... Master Elf (final film role)

Awards and commemoration
The Israeli Film Academy award is named the "Ophir Award" in his honor.

References

External links

 Shaike Ophir, filmography

1928 births
1987 deaths
Israeli male comedians
Israeli male film actors
Jewish Israeli male actors
Israeli male stage actors
Israeli male television actors
Israeli entertainers
Ashkenazi Jews in Mandatory Palestine
Male actors from Jerusalem
Palmach members
20th-century Israeli male actors
20th-century Israeli comedians
Deaths from lung cancer in Israel
Burials at Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery

Shaike Ophir


Peter Greenaway,  (born 5 April 1942) is a British film director, screenwriter and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular. Common traits in his films are the scenic composition and illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death.

Early life
Greenaway was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, to a teacher mother and a builder's merchant father. Greenaway's family had relocated to Wales prior to his birth to escape the Nazi bombings of London. They returned to the London area at the end of World War II and settled in Woodford, then part of Essex. He attended Churchfields Junior School and later Forest School in nearby Walthamstow.

At an early age Greenaway decided on becoming a painter. He became interested in European cinema, focusing first on the films of Ingmar Bergman, and then on the French nouvelle vague filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and, most especially, Alain Resnais. Greenaway has said that Resnais's Last Year in Marienbad (1961) had been the most important influence upon his own filmmaking (and he himself established a close working relationship with that film's cinematographer Sacha Vierny). He now lives in Amsterdam.

Career

1962–1999

In 1962, Greenaway began studies at Walthamstow College of Art, where a fellow student was musician Ian Dury (later cast in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover). Greenaway trained as a muralist for three years; he made his first film, Death of Sentiment, a churchyard furniture essay filmed in four large London cemeteries. In 1965, he joined the Central Office of Information (COI), where he went on to work for fifteen years as a film editor and director. In that time he made a series of experimental films, starting with Train (1966), footage of the last steam trains at Waterloo station (situated behind the COI), edited to a musique concrète composition. Tree (1966) is a homage to the embattled tree growing in concrete outside the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank in London. By the late 1970s he was confident and ambitious, and made Vertical Features Remake and A Walk Through H. The former is an examination of various arithmetical editing structures, and the latter is a journey through the maps of a fictitious country.

In 1980, Greenaway delivered The Falls (his first feature-length film) – a mammoth, fantastical, absurdist encyclopaedia of flight-associated material all relating to ninety-two victims of what is referred to as the Violent Unknown Event (VUE). In the 1980s his cinema flowered in his best-known films, The Draughtsman's Contract (1982), A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), The Belly of an Architect (1987), Drowning by Numbers (1988), and his most successful film, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). Greenaway's most familiar musical collaborator during this period is composer Michael Nyman, who has scored several films.

In 1989, Greenaway collaborated with artist Tom Phillips on a television serial A TV Dante, dramatising the first few cantos of Dante's Inferno. In the 1990s he presented Prospero's Books (1991), the controversial The Baby of Mâcon (1993), The Pillow Book (1996), and 8½ Women (1999).

In the early 1990s Greenaway wrote ten opera libretti known as the Death of a Composer series, dealing with the commonalities of the deaths of ten composers from Anton Webern to John Lennon; however, the other composers are fictitious, and one is a character from The Falls. In 1995, Louis Andriessen completed the sixth libretto, Rosa – A Horse Drama. He is currently professor of cinema studies at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

2000–present
Greenaway presented the ambitious The Tulse Luper Suitcases, a multimedia project that resulted in three films, a website, two books, a touring exhibition, and a shorter feature which reworked the material of the first three films.

He also contributed to Visions of Europe, a short film collection by different European Union directors; his British entry is The European Showerbath. Nightwatching and Rembrandt's J'Accuse are two films on Rembrandt, released respectively in 2007 and 2008. Nightwatching is the first feature in the series "Dutch Masters", with the second project titled as Goltzius and the Pelican Company.

On 17 June 2005, Greenaway appeared for his first VJ performance during an art club evening in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with music by DJ Serge Dodwell (aka Radar), as a backdrop, 'VJ' Greenaway used for his set a special system consisting of a large plasma screen with laser controlled touchscreen to project the ninety-two Tulse Luper stories on the twelve screens of "Club 11", mixing the images live. This was later reprised at the Optronica festival, London.

On 12 October 2007, he created the multimedia installation Peopling the Palaces at Venaria Reale at the Royal Palace of Venaria, which animated the Palace with 100 videoprojectors.

Greenaway was interviewed for Clive Meyer's Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice (2011), and voiced strong criticisms of film theory as distinct from discussions of other media: "Are you sufficiently happy with cinema as a thinking medium if you are only talking to one person?"

On 3 May 2016, he received a Honoris Causa doctorate from the University of San Martín, Argentina.

Nine Classical Paintings Revisited
In 2006, Greenaway began a series of digital video installations, Nine Classical Paintings Revisited, with his exploration of Rembrandt's Night Watch in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. On 30 June 2008, after much negotiation, Greenaway staged a one-night performance 'remixing' da Vinci's The Last Supper in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan to a select audience of dignitaries. The performance consisted of superimposing digital imagery and projections onto the painting with music from the composer Marco Robino.

Greenaway exhibited his digital exploration of The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese as part of the 2009 Venice Biennial. An arts writer for The New York Times called it "possibly the best unmanned art history lecture you'll ever experience," while acknowledging that some viewers might respond to it as "mediocre art, Disneyfied kitsch or a flamboyant denigration of site-specific video installation." The 50-minute presentation, set to a soundtrack, incorporates closeup images of faces from the painting along with animated diagrams revealing compositional relations among the figures. These images are projected onto and around the replica of the painting that now stands at the original site, within the Palladian architecture of the Benedictine refectory on San Giorgio Maggiore. The soundtrack features music and imagined dialogue scripted by Greenaway for the 126 "wedding guests, servants, onlookers and wedding crashers" depicted in the painting, consisting of small talk and banal chatter that culminates in reaction to the miraculous transformation of water to wine, according to the Gospels the first miracle performed by Jesus. Picasso's Guernica, Seurat's Grande Jatte, works by Jackson Pollock and Claude Monet, Velázquez's Las Meninas and Michelangelo's The Last Judgment are possible series subjects.

Films

Features
The Falls (1980)
The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)
A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)
The Belly of an Architect (1987)
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
Prospero's Books (1991)
The Baby of Mâcon (1993)
The Pillow Book (1996)
8½ Women (1999)
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (2003)
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: Vaux to the Sea (2004)
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 3: From Sark to the Finish (2004)
A Life in Suitcases (edited version of The Tulse Luper Suitcases series) (2005)
Nightwatching (2007)
Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012)
Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)
 Walking to Paris (upcoming)

Shorts
Death of Sentiment (1962)
Tree (1966)
Train (1966)
Revolution (1967)
5 Postcards from Capital Cities (1967)
Intervals (1969)
Erosion (1971)
H Is for House (1973)
Windows (1975)
Water Wrackets (1975)
Water (1975)
Goole by Numbers (1976)
Dear Phone (1978)
Vertical Features Remake (1978)
A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist (1978)
1–100 (1978)
Making a Splash (1984)
Inside Rooms: 26 Bathrooms, London & Oxfordshire (1985)
Hubert Bals Handshake (1989)
Rosa: La monnaie de munt (1992)
Peter Greenaway (1995) - segment of Lumière and Company
The Bridge Celebration (1997)
The Man in the Bath (2001)
European Showerbath (2004) - segment of Visions of Europe
Castle Amerongen (2011)
Just in Time (2013) - segment of 3x3D

Documentaries and mockumentaries
Eddie Kid (1978)
Cut Above the Rest (1978)
Zandra Rhodes (1979)
Women Artists (1979)
Leeds Castle (1979)
Lacock Village (1980)
Country Diary (1980)
Terence Conran (1981)
Four American Composers (1983)
The Coastline (also known as The Sea in their Blood) (1983)
Fear of Drowning (1988)
The Reitdiep Journeys (2001)
Rembrandt's J'Accuse (2008)
The Marriage (2009)
Atomic Bombs on the Planet Earth (2011)

Television
Act of God (1980)
Death in the Seine (French TV, 1988)
A TV Dante (mini-series, 1989)
M Is for Man, Music, Mozart (1991)
A Walk Through Prospero's Library (1992)
Darwin (French TV, 1993)
The Death of a Composer: Rosa, a Horse Drama (1999)

Exhibitions
The Physical Self, Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1991)
 Le bruit des nuages (as curator), Louvre Museum, Paris (1992)
100 Objects to represent the World (1992) at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Hofburg Imperial Palace Vienna.
Stairs 1 Geneva (1995)
Flyga över vatten/Flying over water, Malmö Konsthall (16/9 2000 – 14/1 2001)
 Peopling the Palaces at Venaria Reale, Palace of Venaria (2007)
 Heavy Water, Chelouche Gallery, Tel Aviv (2011)
 Sex & The Sea, Maritiem Museum, Rotterdam (2013)
 The Towers/Lucca Hubris, Lucca (2013)

References

External links

 Peter Greenaway. Faculty website at European Graduate School (Biography, filmography, articles and photos)

 Manu Luksch. Interview – The Medium is the Message. Telepolis. 13 February 1997
 Chris Gordon. Interview – An eye for optical theory, The St. Petersburg Times, Russia. 21 June 2012

1942 births
BAFTA Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
English experimental filmmakers
English film directors
20th-century English painters
English male painters
21st-century English painters
21st-century male artists
English screenwriters
English male screenwriters
Golden Calf winners
Living people
People educated at Forest School, Walthamstow
People from Newport, Wales
Alumni of Walthamstow College of Art
20th-century Welsh people
Postmodernist filmmakers

Peter Greenaway


Thomas Fey (born November 9, 1960) is a German orchestral conductor.

At the University of Music and Performing Arts Mannheim he studied music and conducting and at the Salzburg Mozarteum studied historically informed performance practice with Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He also attended master classes with Leonard Bernstein at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. In 1985 while still a student he founded the Heidelberger Motetenchor and in 1987 the Schlierbach Chamber Orchestra, which in 1993 became the Heidelberger Sinfoniker (Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra) giving their inaugural concert on January 1, 1994. With the latter group, he began recording the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn for the Hänssler Classic label.

In 2003 he founded the original instruments Ensemble La Passione and the Mozart Mannheim Orchestra.

In October 2014 Fey suffered a "severe traumatic brain injury". It was hoped that Fey would recover and be well enough to rejoin the orchestra at the beginning of 2016. However, as of 2018, it was unclear whether he would return to conducting.

References

External links
All Music biography by Robert Cummings

1960 births
Living people
21st-century German conductors (music)
German male conductors (music)
21st-century German male musicians

Thomas Fey


Federico Mayor Zaragoza (born 27 January 1934 in Barcelona) is a scientist, scholar, politician, diplomat, and poet from Spain. He served as the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) from 1987 to 1999. After his tenure as Director-General, he continued to participate in various peace-related organizations such as the Foundation for a Culture of Peace and the International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World, as a member of their honorary boards. Additionally, he serves as the honorary chairman of the Académie de la Paix.

Biography
Federico Mayor Zaragoza was born in Barcelona, Spain. He obtained a Ph.D. in pharmacy from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1958. In 1963 he became professor of biochemistry at the School of Pharmacy of the University of Granada, and in 1968 was elected rector of that university, a post he held until 1972. The following year he was appointed professor in biochemistry at the Autonomous University of Madrid. In 1974 he co-founded the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre at the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Spanish High Council for Scientific Research. The main focus of Professor Mayor's scientific research has been on molecular brain disease, and he was responsible for drawing up the Spanish National Plan for Mental Health Prevention. He is a member of the Club of Rome, the Club of Budapest, a founder member of the Issyk-Kul Forum. In 2005 he received the Prize Creu de Sant Jordi from the Generalitat de Catalunya. He is an honorary member of several scientific societies and a member of several academies, among them, the World Academy of Art and Science. He has also received several honorary doctorates (honoris causa). He is honorary president of the University of Granada.

Spanish political career

Federico Mayor Zaragoza was undersecretary of Education and Science in the Spanish Government (1974–1975) during the Francoist dictatorship, UCD deputy for Granada region in the Spanish Parliament (1977–1978), Adviser to the President of the Government (1977–1978), Minister of Education and Science (1981–1982) and CDS deputy in the European Parliament (1987).

UN career

In 1978 Federico Mayor Zaragoza became deputy director-general of UNESCO. In 1987 he was elected director-general of UNESCO and re-elected for a second mandate in 1993. After deciding not to run for a third term, in 1999 he returned to Spain to create the Foundation for a Culture of Peace, of which he is chairman.

UNESCO

During his 12 years as head of UNESCO (1987–1999) Mayor Zaragoza gave new life to the organization's mission to "build a bastion of peace in the minds of all people", putting the institution at the service of peace, tolerance, human rights and peaceful coexistence, working within the scope of its powers and remaining faithful to its original goals. Under his guidance, UNESCO created the Culture of Peace Programme, whose objectives revolve around four main themes: education for peace; human rights and democracy; the fight against isolation and poverty; the defense of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue; and conflict prevention and the consolidation of peace.

On 10 November 1998, the UN General Assembly declared the years 2001–2010, International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World and, on 13 September 1999, it adopted the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, which embodies Mayor's greatest aspirations from both a conceptual and practical standpoint.

Later life

In 2000, Federico Mayor Zaragoza founded the Foundation for a Culture of Peace, serving as its president.

In 2002, Mayor Zaragoza was appointed to chair the European Research Council Expert Group (ERCEG) set up in December 2002, during the Danish EU presidency, on the initiative of Helge Sander, the Danish Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation. Its creation was a follow-up to the conclusions on the status of the European Research Area (ERA) reached by the Council of Ministers meeting on competitiveness, held in Brussels on 26 November 2002, and the recommendations on the basic principles of a possible European Research Council (ERC) agreed in October 2002 at a conference in Copenhagen organized by the Danish Research Councils. The European Union has identified the need to strengthen the competitiveness of Europe and to become a knowledge-based economy.

In 2002, Federico Mayor Zaragoza co-founded with Boutros Boutros Ghali, John Brademas, Edward J. Nell, Karim Errouaki  and Alain Chanlat the Centre Humanism, Management & Globalization (HMG) at HEC-Montreal. The aim of HGM was to support projects and develop programs based on policies that would humanize the process of globalization across its many dimensions- economic, ecological, social, political, cultural and organizational.

In 2005, Federico Mayor Zaragoza was appointed co-president for the UN High Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations (AoC), by Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General. The Alliance of Civilizations is an initiative proposed by the President of the Government of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, at the 59th General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) in 2005. It was co-sponsored by the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The initiative seeks to galvanize international action against extremism through the forging of international, intercultural and inter religious dialogue and cooperation. The Alliance places a particular emphasis on defusing tensions between the Western and Islamic worlds. To fulfill the objective of the initiative, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan assembled a High-Level Group (HLG) consisting of 20 eminent persons drawn from policy making, academia, civil society, religious leadership, and the media. A full range of religions and civilizations were represented. Among the members were former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, who proposed the Dialogue Among Civilizations initiative, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South African Nobel laureate, Prof. Pan Guang, who obtained the Saint Petersburg-300 Medal for Contribution to China-Russia Relations, and Arthur Schneier, who is the founder and president of the "Appeal of Conscience Foundation" and who gained the "Presidential Citizens Medal". The HLG met 5 times between November 2005 and November 2006, and produced a report prioritizing relations between the Western and Muslim societies. The first meeting of the HLG of the AoC took place in Spain in November 2005. The second meeting was in Doha, Qatar from 25 to 27 February 2006 with the agenda of aiming to find ways to calm the cartoon crisis between West and Islamic world. The third meeting took place in Dakar, Senegal from 28 to 30 May 2006. At the final meeting in November 2006 in Istanbul, the members presented their final report to Kofi Annan and to Prime Ministers José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The report outlined recommendations and practical solutions on how the Western and Islamic societies can solve misconceptions and misunderstandings between them. According to the report, "politics, not religion, is at the heart of growing Muslim-Western divide", although a large emphasis is maintained on religion.

In 2007, Federico Mayor Zaragoza co-founded with Boutros Boutros Ghali, Michel Rocard, John Brademas, Robert Mundell, Edward J. Nell, Karim Errouaki, Mohamed Hassad, and Tomas Solis the Tangier Expo 2012 International Support Committee. Federico Mayor Zaragoza was appointed by HM King Mohammed VI of Morocco as the President of the Tangier Expo 2012 International Support Committee. HM King Mohammed VI of Morocco decided in 2006 to submit the candidacy of Tangiers, the City of the Strait of Gibraltar for the organization of the 2012 International Exhibition. The theme of the exhibition was "Routes of the World, Cultures Connecting. For a More United World".

Federico Mayor Zaragoza is a member of the Fondation Chirac's honour committee, ever since the foundation was launched in 2008 by former French president Jacques Chirac in order to promote world peace. He also participates as jury member for the Prize for Conflict Prevention awarded every year by this foundation.

In 2011, Federico Mayor Zaragoza was appointed President of the International Commission against the Death Penalty. The commission, which is supported by 18 states, advocates the universal abolition of the death penalty. It also promotes abolition in legislation in those countries where a moratorium already exists. Federico Mayor Zaragoza, speaking at the Parliamentary Assembly on 14 April 2011, highlighted the role of the Council of Europe, OSCE and EU to make Europe a death penalty free zone, except for one country and argued that "despite progress achieved in the last decades– two thirds of the countries in the world have already abolished the death penalty – efforts must be intensified until its total eradication". He went on to argue that "The right to life is the most basic of all rights, because it is a pre-requisite for the exercise of all the other human rights." He pointed out two key arguments for abolition: death penalty is irreversible – mistakes cannot be repaired – and there in no evidence of its deterrent value to prevent criminality.

In 2013 Federico Mayor Zaragoza joined the Nizami Ganjavi International Center Board along with Ismail Serageldin, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Tarja Halonen, Suleyman Demirel, Roza Otunbayeva, Ambassador Walter Fust. It is a cultural, non-profit, non-political organization dedicated to the memory of Persian poet, Nizami Ganjavi, the study and dissemination of his works, the promotion of the principles embodied in his writings, the advancement of culture and creative expression, and the promotion of learning, dialogue, tolerance and understanding between cultures and people.

Federico Mayor Zaragoza and Ambassador Karim Errouaki were keynote speakers at the first annual Peace Education Conference, held virtually in September 2021.

Foundation for a Culture of Peace

It was founded in March 2000 and ascribed to the protectorate for foundations of the Community of Madrid's regional Department of Education. The Foundation's objective is to contribute to building and consolidating a Culture of Peace through reflection, research, education and on-the-spot action. Its activities focus mainly on linking and mobilizing networks of institutions, organizations and individuals who have proven their commitment to the values of the Culture of Peace.

Through the Foundation for a Culture of Peace,  Mayor continues the task he began as director-general of UNESCO: that of promoting the transition from a culture of violence and force, to a culture of peace and tolerance. Each year the Foundation offers an annual Culture of Peace course in collaboration with the Juan Carlos I University of Madrid, with educational content including democracy, human rights, and the origin of conflicts. In December 2000, the Foundation organized an international conference attended by major figures in the struggle for justice, freedom, and peace. At the end of the conference, the Declaration of Madrid was adopted unanimously.

Federico Mayor Zaragoza calls for a new world order to extricate humanity from our present dilemma. A new ethical and moral order whose cultural, scientific and social dimensions balance economic and technology development. For our real goal in life is to improve the quality of life of each and everyone of us. This involves new forms of cooperation as the world is now one village.

Federico Mayor Zaragoza endorses the stand taken by UNESCO with regard to peace, disarmament, human rights and education. In the domain of information he suggests a new approach, warning against any monopoly control of communications, and denouncing the dangers of one sided information.

Federico Mayor Zaragoza argued that man is in a state of transformation; from Homo faber he is on the path to Homo sapiens. Knowledge liberates, and scientists have a crucial role to play. The new order proposed requires a proper use of knowledge- for knowledge, like all else, only exists through humanity and for humanity. It should thus be the focus of our reflections. All power to the imagination!

Since 2011, the Foundation for a Culture of Peace hosts the Global Program Women's Knowledge International devoted to: 1) develop an educational project of global reach to contribute to the production and dissemination of women's and feminist knowledge, 2) foster the growth of a socio-political conscience on gender equity among likeminded people and a wide range of actors, 3)build cultures of peace through women's produced knowledge.

Activities and research

Activities

The activity of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace is mainly based on the entailment and mobilization of networks of institutions, organizations and individuals that stand out by their commitment with the values for the culture of peace. The concrete actions of the foundation are mainly centered  in the divulging and educative areas.

Research

Federico Mayor Zaragoza published his book The World Ahead in 2000. The specific aim of the book, which he has drawn up in collaboration with Jerome Binde and with the assistance of Jean-Yves Le Saux, Ragnar Gudmundsson, and the team of UNESCO's Analysis and Forecasting Office, is to prepare people more thoroughly for the coming decades so that they may respond in good time to the challenges of the future. Federico Mayor argued that, as observed by Ilya Prigogine, We cannot predict the future because the future will never be as before. We can prepare for it because, far from being inscribed in a book of destiny, the future is uncertainty, bifurcation, unpredictable creation. It is in our hands, because the future is freedom- for the most part, it will be exactly what we make of it. We can prepare for the future, but are we prepared for the twenty-first century.

More recently, Mayor Zaragoza was working with Edward J. Nell (Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research, New York) and Karim Errouaki on a book called  Reinventing Globalization after the Crash (2016). The book was prefaced by Boutros Boutros Ghali, and constituted a new blueprint of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace. The book is based on material provided by Federico Mayor Zaragoza's book The World Ahead (Zed Books, UNESCO, 2000), revisited and animated by the theoretical framework put forward by Edward J. Nell in General Theory of Transformational Growth (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and extended by Karim Errouaki (UM, HEC-Montreal, 2003) who argued that Transformational Growth provides a new vision and a new framework, for thinking about economic development, bringing it into the framework of economic history.

Committee of experts

In 2003–2004 Mayor Zaragoza sat on an ad hoc committee of experts, for which he was spokesman, set up to advise the Spanish government regarding the return of the polemical "Salamanca Papers" to the autonomous government of Catalonia. Comprising, among others, Columbia University Professor of History Edward Malefakis, and Juan Pablo Fusi, the committee declared in 2004, by a majority of 14 of its 17 members, that it was "just and legitimate" that the documents be returned to the autonomous government. The documents were finally transferred in 2005.

Publications

Mayor Zaragoza has published over 100 articles in scientific journals, especially from his time as a professor of biochemistry, when he wrote, for example, about metabolism in plants and numerous articles in popular journals. In addition to numerous scientific publications, Mayor Zaragoza has published numerous books and over seven books of poetry – A contraviento (1985), Aguafuertes (1991), El fuego y la esperanza (1996), Terral (1997), Voz de Vida, Voz Debida (2007), Alzare mi Voz (2007) and En Pie de Paz (2008). Mayor Zaragoza has also published more than seventy publications on education strategies, development, human resources and science and technology.

Books

Tomorrow Is Always Too Late, Stamford Publishing, 1992.
Memory of the Future, UNESCO Publishing, 1995
La Paix Demain?, UNESCO Publishing, 1995.
Science and Power, UNESCO Publishing, 1995
The New Page, UNESCO Publishing, 1995.
UNESCO: Un Idéal en Action, UNESCO Publishing, 1996.
The World Ahead: Our Future in the Making, Zed Books,2000.
Los Nudos Gordianos, Galaxia Gutenberg,1999.
La Palabra y la Espada, AEFLA, 2002
La Fuerza de la Palabra, Adhara, 2005
Un Dialogo Iberico en el marco europeo y mundial (with Mário Soares), Galxia Gutenberg, 2006.
Enfermedades Metabólicas (ed.) (2006)
Tiempo de Acción, 2008
Tiempo de Accion, Universidad de Granada, Editorial Anfora Nova, 2008
The Crime of Silence, 2011
Reinventing Globalization After the Crash (with Edward J. Nell and Karim Errouaki), forthcoming in 2012.
Economics and Management in Dialogue: Reinventing Management (Organizational Strategies through the Transformational Growth Lens), with Edward J. Nell and Karim Errouaki, forthcoming.

Interviews
 During an interview for Global Education Magazine (30 January 2013), Mayor Zaragoza stated: "In a moment in which we already can and already have freedom of speech, we have to get involved and committed. We have to be aware that we are still in time to change a culture of imposition, fear, a culture economically based on specula, on productive relocation, on war; we have the chance of changing it into a culture of dialogue, conciliation, alliance, into a culture of peace".

Notes

References

1934 births
Complutense University of Madrid alumni
Democratic and Social Centre (Spain) MEPs
Foreign Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Living people
Members of the constituent Congress of Deputies (Spain)
Members of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Members of the Institute for Catalan Studies
MEPs for Spain 1987–1989
Nonviolence advocates
Politicians from Barcelona
Recipients of the Great Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit (Brazil)
Spanish academics
Spanish officials of the United Nations
UNESCO Directors-General
Union of the Democratic Centre (Spain) politicians

Federico Mayor Zaragoza


Sashikumar Subramony, better known as Sashi Kumar, is an Indian actor who has worked in Tamil language films, stage and serials. He made a breakthrough as an actor with his performances in Mani Ratnam's Kannathil Muthamittal (2002) and Balu Mahendra's Thalaimuraigal (2013), playing the lead role in the later.
 Currently Creative Producer for PD Studios Kakkai Siraginiley

Career
Sashikumar was born in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu to a Keralan-born Tamil Iyer and a Nambudiri mother. He became interested in acting from a young age, first appearing as Joseph in a nativity play, and completed his studies at Stanes Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School before doing a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He then attempted to become an actor and sought opportunities by visiting directors' houses including Balu Mahendra's, where the director asked him to get out after a meeting lasting a few seconds. Unable to get acting role, he instead worked as an editor at JJ TV for a year, until the channel ceased production in 1996. Sashi Kumar became acquainted with cinematographer Sakthi Saravanan and director Raja Pandi and through them began portraying small roles in Tamil television serials. In 1999, Sashikumar was spotted by Balu Mahendra, who had forgotten their earlier meeting and wanted to cast him in an episode for the serial, Kadhai Neram. When, Sashi turned up at the shoot, Balu Mahendra felt that the actor was unsuitable for the character and asked him to leave the set. Sashi Kumar improvised, re-did his appearance and pleaded with Balu Mahendra to give him the role, to which the director obliged. Impressed by his performance, Sashi Kumar went on to work over thirty more times with Balu Mahendra for episodes of Kadhai Neram, including for the serial's Hindi version. He continued working on Tamil serials including Raadhika's Chithi, becoming acquainted with several other film-makers during the period.

Sashikumar worked on the pre-production of a feature film with Balu Mahendra during 2000 but the pair were unable to find a producer, so Sashikumar began acting in Tamil films as a supporting actor. He first appeared as Rambha's brother in N. Linguswamy's Aanandham (2001), before playing the character of a mentally-retarded youngster in Shahjahan (2001). Balu Mahendra then recommended Sashikumar to director Mani Ratnam during a chance meeting at Vijay Adhiraj's wedding, and the film-maker chose him to portray a LTTE separatist in the war drama, Kannathil Muthamittal (2002). He continued to portray small roles in films including in Balu Mahendra's Julie Ganapathi (2003), Nala Damayanthi (2003) and Thalainagaram. Following the release of the S. J. Surya-starrer Newtonin Moondram Vidhi (2009), Sashikumar struggled to gain film offers and considered leaving back to his home town.

Sashikumar returned to star in Sri Ramakrishna Darshanam (2012) starring as Indian yogi Ramakrishna for the venture. In 2013, he was cast in the lead role in Balu Mahendra's final film, Thalaimuraigal, portraying an estranged son of the character portrayed by the director. Produced by director Sasikumar, the film opened to positive reviews in December 2013 but did not garner publicity to perform well at the box office. The Hindu called the film "good cinema" and added Sashikumar's "appreciable underplay is his asset" and "sadly, cinema has not used him enough". Rediff.com called the film "brilliant" and Behindwoods.com labelled the film as "an artistic piece of parallel cinema". Balu Mahendra died two months after the film's release.

Filmography

References

External links

Living people
Male actors in Tamil cinema
21st-century Indian male actors
Male actors from Tamil Nadu
Actors from Coimbatore
Place of birth missing (living people)
1974 births

Sashikumar Subramani


North Yorkshire is a large county in the region of Yorkshire in Northern Europe.

North Yorkshire is part of one bigger county called Yorkshire. The three parts of Yorkshire are called the West Riding, the East Riding, and the North Riding. in 1974, the names changed. The "North Riding" changed to "North Yorkshire". The other main parts of Yorkshire are now South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, and the East Riding of Yorkshire.

The largest city in North Yorkshire is York. York is now (since 1996) a unitary authority, it is not officially part of North Yorkshire.

North Yorkshire is the largest county in England. It has several towns. It also has many open green areas and hills, so two of the 11 UK national parks (the North York Moors and most of the Yorkshire Dales) are in North Yorkshire.

Ceremonial counties of England

1974 establishments in England

North Yorkshire