The Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare gives people the chance to pay tribute to the victims of chemical warfare. It also allows governments and organizations to commit or reaffirm their commitment to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an organization that aims to end the threat of chemical weapons and promote the peace and security worldwide.
Public life
The Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare is a UN observance and not a public holiday on April 29.
Background
In November 2005 the UN decided to observe a memorial “Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare” on April 29 each year. The date April 29 was chosen for this observance because it was when the Chemical Weapons Convention came into force.
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare Observances
Weekday
Date
Year
Name
Holiday type
Where it is observed
Fri
Apr 29
2011
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
United Nations observance
Sun
Apr 29
2012
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
United Nations observance
Mon
Apr 29
2013
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
United Nations observance
Tue
Apr 29
2014
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
United Nations observance
Wed
Apr 29
2015
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
United Nations observance
Fri
Apr 29
2016
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
United Nations observance
Sat
Apr 29
2017
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
United Nations observance
Sun
Apr 29
2018
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
United Nations observance
Mon
Apr 29
2019
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
United Nations observance
Wed
Apr 29
2020
Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
Organizations such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations (UN) actively promote the World Day for Safety and Health at Work on April 28 every year.
World Day for Safety and Health at Work helps raise awareness of workplace safety and health issues.
The UN, ILO and other organizations, communities, individuals, and government bodies with an interest in workplace health and safety unite on or around April 28 to promote an international campaign known as World Day for Safety and Health at Work. The UN posts this event in its events calendar each year.
Community leaders and organizational representatives often promote the day by speaking out on issues such as workplace health and safety standards. Various media have promoted the day through news articles and broadcast programs. Different types of events and activities that center on workplace health and safety are held in many countries on or around April 28 each year.
Public Life
The World Day for Safety and Health at Work is an observance and is not a public holiday.
Background
The International Labour Organization (ILO) started observing the World Day for Safety and Health at Work on April 28, 2003. The ILO is devoted to advancing opportunities for people to obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. It aims to promote rights at work, encourage decent employment opportunities, boost social protection, and strengthen dialogue in work-related issues.
World Day for Safety and Health at Work Observances
MICHAEL GLAWOGGER, WHO FILMED LIVES OF DESPERATION
Michael Glawogger in 2011. He delved deep into the lives of poor people the world over.Credit Ian Gavan/Getty Images
Michael Glawogger, an Austrian filmmaker known for globe-trotting documentaries that show people grappling with horrendous circumstances, died on Wednesday in Liberia, where he was planning his next movie. He was 54.
Michael Glawogger, an Austrian filmmaker known for globe-trotting documentaries that show people grappling with horrendous circumstances, died on Wednesday in Liberia, where he was planning his next movie. He was 54.
The cause was malaria, Lotus Film, an Austrian company that produced Mr. Glawogger’s films, said.
Mr. Glawogger first captured wide attention in 1998 with “Megacities.” Subtitled “12 Stories of Survival,” it strung together scenes from mostly poor inhabitants of Mumbai, New York, Mexico and Moscow, including Times Square street hustlers and a Mexican striptease dancer preparing breakfast for her three young children.
As in most of Mr. Glawogger’s films, the narration in “Megacities” is sparse; he said he wanted viewers to come to their own conclusions. It turned out to be the first film in a trilogy, followed by “Workingman’s Death” (2005) and “Whore’s Glory” (2011).
“So often in commercial cinema, work, especially manual labor, and poverty are carefully repressed, banished off-screen,” the Harvard Film Archive said in notes for a 2012 showing of the three films. “A bracing tonic is offered by the breathtaking trilogy of bravura documentaries by Michael Glawogger that locates these issues emphatically center screen.”
A scene from the 2011 film “Whore’s Glory,” in which Mr. Glawogger documented prostitutes’ lives in three countries.Credit Kino Lorber
Mr. Glawogger returned to the theme in “Workingman’s Death,” which chronicled manual labor across the globe. In Ukraine, men scrape for chunks of coal to survive. In Pakistan, ex-farmers scrap old oil tankers with little more than their bare hands. In East Java, Indonesia, young men kill hundreds of goats and bulls every morning, then sell them, shouting, “Skin! Innards! Heads!”
One of these men faces the camera and says, “Everyone here does his job patiently, and if God in his infinite mercy should bestow us with success, so be it.”
In the 2011 film “Whore’s Glory,” Mr. Glawogger documented prostitutes’ lives in three countries. The movie begins in Bangkok, where prostitutes punch a time clock in a brothel called the Fishtank and line up on one side of a plate-glass window so customers can select them by number. At the City of Joy, a brothel housing 600 to 800 women in Faridpur, Bangladesh, the going rate is $2.40, but one customer is shown bargaining a prostitute down to 60 cents.
The third brothel is in the border town of Reynosa, Mexico. The women working there are middle-aged and on crack.
Reviewers marveled that Mr. Glawogger was given access to the brothels. In one scene, he shows an actual sex act.
Mr. Glawogger was accused of staging scenes. His answer, in a 2012 interview with Cineaste magazine, was to ask, “What exactly is that definition of reality?”
He was also accused of paying people to appear in documentaries, which he admitted doing. He told Cineaste that he had even posted bail and bought drugs for people who allowed him into their world. But the main way he gained entree, he said, was working hard at making friends by visiting people again and again, at first without a camera. He became godfather to one of the Mexican striptease dancer’s children.
Michael Glawogger was born in Graz, Austria, on Dec. 3, 1959. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute and the Vienna Film Academy in the 1980s.
He made fiction features as well as documentaries. His black comedy “Slumming” (2006) told of a nasty prank two friends play on a third: They find him passed out on a bench and drive him across the Austrian border into Slovakia. He wakes up not knowing where he is and unable to speak the language.
In his “Kill Daddy Good Night” (2009), the Jewish designer of a patricidal video game turns his back on his father, a politician, but winds up looking after a war criminal hiding in America.
Mr. Glawogger won numerous awards, including the London Film Festival’s Grierson Award for “Workingman’s Death”; the Austrian Film Award for best documentary for “Whore’s Glory”; and the award for best screenplay at the Ghent Film Festival for “Slumming.”
This year Mr. Glawogger directed a segment for “Cathedrals of Culture,” a 3-D movie for which six directors looked at a particular building that fascinated them. Wim Wenders, who helped organize the project, said the idea was to suggest what the buildings would say if they could talk. Mr. Glawogger filmed the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg.
Information on Mr. Glawogger’s survivors was unavailable.
It seems unlikely that another director will have any idea now to finish the project Mr. Glawogger was pursuing at his death.
“It’s a film about nothing,” he said. “I’ll travel once around the world in one year, and I’ll bring back a film.”
Correction: April 25, 2014
An earlier version of this obituary misstated Mr. Glawogger’s birth date. He was born on Dec. 3, 1959, not March 12.
PHILLIP HAYES DEAN, THE PLAYWRIGHT OF DIVISIVE ‘PAUL ROBESON’
Phillip Hayes Dean’s dramatic works included “Paul Robeson.”Credit Craig Schwartz, via Associated Press
Phillip Hayes Dean, a playwright whose stage portrait of the actor and social crusader Paul Robeson aroused one of the theater’s more unusual controversies and derailed his own promising career, died on April 14 in Los Angeles, shortly after a revival of the play opened at the Ebony Repertory Theater there. He was 83.
The cause was an aortic aneurysm, said Wren T. Brown, the theater’s founder and producer.
The public dispute over “Paul Robeson,” which starred James Earl Jones and opened on Broadway in January 1978, involved a welter of issues: artistic license, freedom of expression, accuracy in character portrayal and black pride. But it boiled down to the dissatisfaction of a group of prominent black intellectuals with Mr. Dean’s representation of Robeson, which they felt was insufficiently complex, insufficiently thorny and too easily digestible by a mass audience.
By then Mr. Dean had explored his own experience as a black man and the sociology of black communities in a number of well-received plays, including “The Sty of the Blind Pig,” set in Chicago as the dawn of the civil rights movement begins to unsettle the settled ways of the play’s characters; “Freeman,” about the diverse paths of two young black men in a small Michigan city much like Pontiac, where Mr. Dean came of age; and “Every Night When the Sun Goes Down,” which focuses on black-on-black exploitation and violence.
“Paul Robeson” appeared on Broadway in 1978 with James Earl Jones.
All three were performed Off Broadway, and “Sty,” starring Mary Alice, and “Freeman,” with Louis Gossett Jr., were produced on television. But none achieved the notoriety of “Paul Robeson,” a play with songs, in which the story of Robeson’s remarkable life as an athlete, scholar, actor, singer, civil rights activist and left-wing lightning rod unfolds in a monologue.
The play was initially intended as a television drama starring Mr. Jones, who brought Mr. Dean to the project. After it proved untenable for television, it evolved into a stage production and began touring the country in the fall of 1977 on a circuitous journey to New York that was fraught with artistic disagreements. Mr. Dean wrote several drafts of the script, and the original director, Charles Nelson Reilly, was replaced by Lloyd Richards.
Then just before opening night on Broadway, a letter signed by 56 writers, artists and politicians — among them Alvin Ailey, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Charles Rangel, Coretta Scott King, Julian Bond and Robeson’s son, Paul Jr., who was said to have initiated the protest — appeared as a paid advertisement in Variety.
“We, the undersigned members of the black community,” the letter declared in part, “having seen the production or read versions of it in progress, regretfully feel compelled to take the extraordinary step of alerting all concerned citizens to what we believe to be, however unintended, a pernicious perversion of the essence of Paul Robeson.”
The letter’s implication was that the play had softened Mr. Robeson’s positions as a political dissident, a black activist and an avowed socialist. Subsequent public statements by some of the signers underscored this. “What this country needs is a hero who is black and a socialist,” the actor Ossie Davis said. Baldwin said the play depicted Robeson as “a chocolate John Wayne.” Though no one called for a boycott, picketers demonstrated at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. (Several weeks later, the play moved to a smaller house, the Booth.)
News reports, including one by the newscaster Carl Stokes, formerly the first black mayor of a major city, Cleveland, determined that some of the signers had not read or seen the play but had acted in deference to the Robeson family.
An outraged Mr. Dean said the protest was a McCarthy-like attempt to squelch freedom of speech and freedom of thought — he referred to the signers as the “House Un-Black Activities Committee” — precisely the kind of treatment Robeson had encountered in his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Thirty-three writers — including Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Jules Feiffer, John Guare, Paddy Chayefsky, Lillian Hellman, Stephen Sondheim and at least one black playwright, Ed Bullins — rose to Mr. Dean’s defense, condemning the protest in a statement as a lamentable attempt “to influence critics and audiences against a play.”
The Broadway show closed after just 77 performances. But in a vindication of sorts, Mr. Jones appeared as Robeson in a public television production of the play, and “Paul Robeson” was briefly revived on Broadway twice — in 1988 and 1995, both times starring Avery Brooks — without a peep of dissent.
Nonetheless, Mr. Dean was set back by the protest, and though he continued writing, he never published or produced another play. “He was very, very deeply injured by those events, and it impeded the progress of what had been a significant theatrical voice,” Mr. Brown said in an interview on Tuesday.
Mr. Dean was born in Chicago on Jan. 17, 1931. His father, Robert, died when Phillip was very young, and his mother, Leatha, a nurse, married Dewey Matthews, an autoworker. After the family moved to Pontiac, Mich., Mr. Dean attended Wayne State University in Detroit, though he did not graduate.
He wrote from an early age, but his first theatrical training was as an actor, at the Will-O-Way Apprentice and Repertory Theater in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. He served in the Army and moved to New York in the early 1950s to audition for the Broadway drama “Take a Giant Step,” by Louis Peterson. (The role went to Mr. Gossett.) He had a small part in “The Wisteria Trees,” a play by Joshua Logan based on “The Cherry Orchard,” and he was the stage manager for an all-black production of “Waiting for Godot,” with Geoffrey Holder and Earle Hyman.
Mr. Dean, who lived in Los Angeles, is survived by his wife of 41 years, Patricia O’Toole; a brother, Howard; two daughters, Wendy Hutson and Karen Dean; and four grandchildren.
In 1988, at the time of the first Broadway revival of “Paul Robeson,” Mr. Robeson Jr. was asked by The New York Times why he no longer opposed the play. He said he thought that Mr. Brooks was better in the part than Mr. Jones had been and that the production was better, “though I repeat, I still feel the character as written is a counterfeit.”
On the same occasion, Mr. Dean said to The Times: “What I remember most was that I was writing the play about a man I admired and my mother was then dying and I was being attacked by well-known and highly respected black people for something that no one could quite pin down. They seemed to feel that my characterization of Robeson did not conform to their vision of the man. Well, obviously my vision was not the only one, and I never said it was or that it should be.” The current Ebony Repertory Theater production of “Paul Robeson,” which was directed by Mr. Dean and stars Keith David, concludes on Sunday.
In the 1930s, Australian authorities undertook a campaign to force the native Aborigines into white culture, with the hope that intermarriage would eventually eliminate their race. Mixed-race aboriginal children were taken from their families and forbidden to speak their native language.
“Are we going to have a population of one million blacks in the Commonwealth, or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget there ever were any Aborigines in Australia?” A. O. Neville, chief protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, asked in 1937.
The effort, little-known outside Australia, drew newfound attention when the movie “Rabbit-Proof Fence” came out in 2002, telling the story of a young girl who was taken from her family, escaped from a government re-education camp, and with two other girls walked for nine weeks through harsh desert, with only plants and small animals to eat, to reunite with her mother in their hometown.
The movie, which starred Kenneth Branagh as Mr. Neville, was based on the book “Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence” (1996), by Doris Pilkington Garimara, who died at 76 on April 10 in Perth, Australia. The cause was ovarian cancer, Australian press reports said.
From left, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan and Everlyn Sampi in the 2002 film “Rabbit-Proof Fence.”Credit Miramax Films
Ms. Pilkington Garimara based the book on the story of her own mother, Molly Kelly. But she, too, had suffered under the government campaign. As a young girl, she and her mother and sister were taken from their home in the early 1940s and sent to a camp. Her mother fled with Doris’s younger sister, but was forced to leave Doris behind.
Not until Christmas Eve 1962 did Doris see her mother again. An aunt had told her who her mother was. Ms. Pilkington Garimara found out where she lived and took her children to meet her. That was when Ms. Kelly shared her story of her first escape and trek home, following a fence that bisects the length of Australia from north to south to protect farmland from hordes of rabbits.
“Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence,” which helped awaken Australians to the plight of the Aborigines, was translated into 11 languages. The Australian Film Institute named the movie version the year’s best film, and it won prizes at a dozen film festivals around the world.
Ms. Pilkington Garimara wrote three other well-received books about her life, and used her celebrity to press for the Aboriginal cause. She was an original member of the government-sanctioned Reconciliation Committee to repair relations between the white and native peoples and a principal promoter of National Sorry Day, an annual event started in 1998 to commemorate the government’s mistreatment of Aborigines.
The focus of the day, held annually on May 26, is the “stolen generation”: the Aboriginal children ripped away from their families. In 2008, the Australian government formally apologized to that stolen generation.
Ms. Pilkington Garimara was born Nugi Garimara. Her birth was unregistered, but the Department of Native Affairs later issued her the birth date of July 1, 1937.
Four years later, the authorities moved her, her mother and sister to a new settlement. Her mother ran away, taking her baby sister and leaving Doris with relatives. At 12, Doris was put in a mission, and at 16, she took advantage of a program to become a nurse’s aide, rather than a servant in a white household. She later studied journalism.
As a young girl, she had taken the name Doris from the woman who employed her mother as a domestic.
She married a man named Pilkington. “My husband was a very, very hard man,” she said in an interview with Hecate, an Australian feminist journal. “He could be warm and loving when he wanted to be, but that side I didn’t see much.”
When she was 45, Ms. Pilkington Garimara returned to her mother’s village to research a possible book. For years, she came back for periods of six to eight weeks. She relearned her original language. Her mother showed her the tree under which she was born. Ms. Pilkington Garimara extensively interviewed her Aunt Daisy, who had accompanied her mother on her 1,000-mile journey.
Her first book, “Caprice: A Stockman’s Daughter” (1991), was a short novella inspired by her family and centered on the changing role of women over the course of the 20th century. Her other books were “Under the Wintamarra Tree” (2002) and “Home to Mother” (2006), a children’s version of “Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence.”
The Australian news media reported that Ms. Pilkington Garimara is survived by four children, 31 grandchildren and 80 great-grandchildren. Two daughters died before her.
In 2010, a mysteriously bright supernova appeared, later sparking a debate within the astronomy community. But new images of the now-faded supernova reveal an intervening — and until now invisible — cosmic lens, which magnified its light.
Watch a Star Evolve in “Real Time”
The odd behavior of a star in the heart of the Stingray Nebula provides tantalizing evidence that we may be seeing, first-hand, its helium-shell flash: an explosive phase of nuclear burning at the end of a star’s life.
By combining nearly 1,500 observations with sophisticated computer models, astronomers have shed light on a nearby planetary system, proving that the planets’ bizarre orbits will actually remain stable for the next 100 million years.
The Mars rover Opportunity has been cleaned of heavy dust coating its solar panels, thanks to some strong winds blowing over the rim of Endeavour Crater.
The waning crescent Moon and brilliant Venus make a fine pairing at dawn, then a new Moon results in a partial solar eclipse in Australia, and by the end of the week, a waxing crescent shines below Jupiter.
The first and only annular solar eclipse of 2014 has a path that just clips Antarctica, at a location so remote that no one on Earth will get to see the event.
Astronomers don’t know why Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot has been gradually shrinking since the 1800s — or why the downsizing has accelerated during the past two years.
May opens with the Moon just making its entrance into the evening sky and four planets strung along the ecliptic. Download our mp3 and head outside to take a guided tour of this month’s sky with senior contributing editor J. Kelly Beatty.
Here at Hatewatch, we’re taking a deeper look at the donors who keep the largest hate site on the Internet – Stormfront – up and running. Taking in more than $100,000 a year in contributions, Stormfront is one of the best-funded hate sites in the world.
Although the site has hundreds of “Sustaining Members” that pledge $50 a year, a detailed financial study by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) shows that usually less than a dozen donors provide more than half of the income Stormfront takes in each month.
In fact, only a handful of high value contributors cover most of the costs involved in keeping Don Black, owner of Stormfront, and his vision of “White Pride Worldwide” online.
This month, Philip Holthoff, an odd and intensely racist Arkansas high school social studies teacher was among them, pledging $100 on April 20th. He is also a sustaining member. Holthoff’s donation came just days after a Southern Poverty Law Center report identified Stormfront as the primary online meeting place for murderers involved in white supremacist-related killings worldwide.
Holthoff, 53, a teacher at Star City High School in Star City, Ark., about 60 miles south of Little Rock, is another neo-Nazi in a position of trust, hidden in plain sight. On his Facebook page, he links to various hate groups, including American Renaissance, The Occidental Quarterly and Alternative Right, along with the Star City High School Art Department.
It is on Stormfront, in more than 400 posts over the past ten years, where Holthoff has made clear his opinion of the African-American students he is entrusted to educate. Posting under the anonymous user name, “David_Lee_Saxon,” Holthoff has been unflinchingly open about his professional position. “I teach high school and you would be amazed at some of the wild rumors Negro students believe,” Holthoff wrote in 2008.
In a 2009 post in the Stormfront Youth section, in a thread titled “Aren’t Teachers Supposed to Teach truth?” Holthoff wrote: “I teach social studies in a public high school and I am racially conscious!”
In another forum thread he started in 2009 titled “Reflections from a racially conscious high school teacher,” the Arkansas teacher wrote, “You don’t know chaos until you have seen Negro students going wild in the halls after the [2008] election screaming: OBAMA…OBAMA!!!”
Mike Walker, the principal at Star City High School, told Hatewatch he had “no clue” about Holthoff’s racist activities. Dr. Richard Montgomery, the school district’s superintendent, told Hatewatch, “The school district does not advocate hating anyone.” For his part, Holthoff told Hatewatch, after being advised that his racist postings would be reported on, “That’s fine. Go for it.” He added, “I’m not talking to you. I have nothing to say.”
In his writings, rife with spelling and punctuation errors, Holthoff has repeatedly expressed his opinion on interracial dating in his high school. “In every high school there are white girls willing to have sex with black males. I have seen it change from “‘Thats [sic] is so gross, I would never do that .’ [sic] to ‘Well, I personally wouldn’t do it, but if they are in love who are we to interfere?” He continues, “What is changing now is that even ‘nice’ girls from ‘good’ families are having interracial relationships. its not just ‘poor white trash’ girls anymore. I know of cases in which they go to the prom together and the white parent does not have a problem with it!”
Holthoff complained again last year about interracial relationships at his high school.
“I happen to be employed in a school district that is 85% Caucasian. In the most recent homecoming election the queen was white and the king was black. They are also dating, it is widely known as they walk hand in hand down the hall. This school is very rural, they love hunting, fishing NASCAR, and four wheel riding, the very people the media denounces as racist and homophobic, and yet the king and queen received a standing ovation from their fellow high students.”
In another post last year, Holthoff described his high school’s commencement ceremonies and complained about “that odor” of African Americans: “Its [sic] graduation time. I always get a kick out of how white administrators beg and plead for people to behave during the ceremonies. Black parents are the worse. The entire race must have ADD. Halfway into the ceremony they scream, shout, blow air guns and dance in the aisle when their child’s name is called. And that odor get in your clothes to! [sic]”
The SPLC’s files suggest that Holthoff, 53, has been an active neo-Nazi for most of his adult life. Records show he joined the neo-Nazi National Alliance in May 1980 at the age of 19, where he was given membership number A3148. Records also show Holthoff joined National Vanguard in May 2005 as member #V0547, and he is listed as a “lifetime” member of White Revolution.
In a 2007 Stormfront post, Holthoff outlined his pedigree in the racist movement. “I was a loyal NA [National Alliance] member for years, went to two national leadership conferences and once stayed a week in WV [West Virginia] with a friend who was employed on staff under WLP [now deceased leader of the National Alliance William Pierce],” he wrote on Stormfront. “After the death of WLP the infighting and rumors and excessive secrecy disgusted me and I left and joined NV [National Vanguard]. I was at the second [David] Duke leadership conference and had so much hope. I suspect most of those present were NV members.”
Expressing common movement fantasies about rounding up “race traitors” after the revolution, Holthoff wrote earlier this year that he hopes a “top secret group” of white supremacists will form to “bring to justice“ those “traitors” who promote interracial activities like the Super Bowl:
Have you seen how much Super Bowl seats cost? I regard any white that goes to such as irredeemably lost and a traitor to his people. After all, both teams that they will pay thousands to watch are majority non-white.
I hope that when the White Separatist State becomes a reality we have a top secret group that will seek out and bring to Justice, regardless of where in the world they may be, whites that produce or direct such interracial features.
But wait! There is a pattern here. Jews and liberals (What I call the Judeo-liberal coalition) deliberately build a person up as a teen idol. They make sure she is clean as a whistle (Or at least assures us she is. I lost track of how many parents told me years ago that Hannah Montana was an excellent role model for teens and that she was a virgin and a Christian…..)
But I see a deeper pattern here! Remember Buffy the vampire slayer (Yes, I realize the girl playing her was Jewish) but she had a devoted teen following and was marketed as a strong female that all should idolize. The first couple of seasons built the fan base up. But then came the inevitable race mixing with episodes of her dating her former black principal. The idea is to get them hooked and then have their idol in question race mix or become lesbian as a way of encouraging same among teens. Notice how many times that occurs now in teen sit-coms.
Despite being in a position of trust as a teacher while posting crude, racist comments about his African-American students, there is also an underlying creepiness in some of Holthoff’s Stormfront postings. Along with an apparent obsession with teenage interracial sex, Holthoff also seems to express an unusual interest in pornography. In 2007, he wrote about porn and underage girls:
5. I have taught in public schools before. Girls do indeed mature faster, both physical and emotionally than guys. At the risk of being sexist I would rather teach girls. They are more respectful and easier to teach.(I am only referring to WHITE high school girls)
6. I have seen porn before. All of it had a screen introduction stating the girls were of legal age and proof was on file.
7. There is a type of porn in which twenty something aged girls try to look underage by wearing braces and pig tails but even those have the statement of legality prior to the movie.
Holthoff went on to warn Stormfront users about the risks of entrapment facing illegal consumers of under-age porn:
8. I am always aghast at how stupid guys are that get arrested trying to meet this or that 13-17 aged girl in a local hotel. It is always a cop playing as if he is a girl. Folks, I can tell you from experience that teenage girls don’t troll the internet looking for thirty and forty year old guys. Don’t be stupid!
9. Indeed the FBI hired some teenage girls to teach law enforcement how to chat like a teen on the internet in order to entrap people. This operation was called Innocent Images. Yes, your tax dollars at work!
10. Ive [sic] known people to get catalogs in the mail that look fabricated, as if the FBI set them up. These catalogs offer videos of underage girls attending nudists camps. You are invited to order. Don’t be dumb! Its a set up!
“Didn’t Hitler suggest lowering the age of consent for marriage as a way to combat the hothouse sexual atmosphere that reigns supreme in any Judeo-democracy?”
Although most of the hate groups Holthoff is known to have been a member of are now defunct, he claims to run a Yahoo group called “White Southern National Front.” This member-restricted group, started in 2004, remains active.
Oh, and one other thing. It turns out Holthoff is also a ghost hunter of some sort who claims to have seen apparitions. Click here for his web page if you want him to help you track the paranormal.
John Darkow has been a professional cartoonist for over 20 years, spending the last 10 as the staff cartoonist at the Columbia Daily Tribune. He is syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons.
World Intellectual Property Day is observed on April 26 each year with a variety of events and activities worldwide. It aims to increase people’s awareness and understanding of intellectual property (IP). World Intellectual Property Day is sometimes referred as World IP Day.
World Intellectual Property Day focuses on increasing people’s awareness and understanding of all aspects of intellectual property.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) works together with various government agencies, non-government organizations, community groups and individuals to hold different events and activities to promote World Intellectual Property Day each year. Activities and events may include (but are not exclusive to):
Stage concerts or other public performances centered around the around the World IP Day theme, with the performers delivering messages which encourage respect for creators and creativity.
Essay competitions for young people on themes relating to intellectual property, innovation, piracy, counterfeiting, and other similar issues.
Seminars or free lectures in universities to build awareness of intellectual property and its benefits among students, faculty and researchers.
Exhibits in museums, art galleries, schools and other educational institutions, with presentations explaining the link between exhibitions, innovation and intellectual property.
Some local intellectual and copyright offices may have an open day on or around April 26 to promote World IP Day. Some educational institutions may choose World IP Day as a time to celebrate the works of a notable inventor, artist, designer, or entrepreneur, and link discussions with the important role of intellectual property.
Public life
World Intellectual Property Day, also known as World IP Day, is an observance held in many places around the world. It is not designated as a special public holiday.
Background
WIPO is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It is dedicated to developing a balanced and accessible international intellectual property (IP) system, which rewards creativity, stimulates innovation and contributes to economic development while safeguarding the public interest.
WIPO decided in 2000 to designate an annual World Intellectual Property Day to address the perceived gap between IP as a business/legal concept and its relevance to people’s lives. April 26 was chosen as the date upon which the convention establishing WIPO first entered into force in 1970.
WIPO plays a key role in organizing World IP Day. The activities, events and campaigns that focus on World IP Day seek to increase public understanding of what IP really means, and to demonstrate how the IP system fosters not only music, arts and entertainments, but also all products and technological innovations that help to shape the world.
World Malaria Day gives people the chance to promote or learn about the efforts made to prevent and reduce Malaria around the world. It is observed on April 25 each year.
Good healthcare is important to prevent and treat diseases such as Malaria.
Organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), which is the United Nations’ (UN) directing and coordinating authority for health, actively play a role in promoting and supporting World Malaria Day. The activities and events that take place on or around World Malaria Day are often joint efforts between governments, non-government organizations, communities and individuals. Countries that have been involved in actively participating in World Malaria Day include (but are not exclusive to):
Belgium.
Denmark.
Ethiopia.
Cameroon.
Germany
Mozambique.
Switzerland.
Uganda.
United States.
Zambia
Many people, as well as commercial businesses and not-for-profit organizations, will use the day as an opportunity to donate money towards key malaria interventions. Many fundraising events are held to support the prevention, treatment and control of malaria. Some people may also use the observance to write letters or petitions to political leaders, calling for greater support towards protecting and treating people who are at risk of malaria. Many newspapers, websites, and magazines, as well as television and radio stations, may use World Malaria Day as the chance to promote or publicize awareness campaigns about malaria.
Public life
World Malaria Day is a global observance and not a public holiday.
Background
Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes. About half of the worlds’ population is at risk of malaria, particularly those in lower-income countries. It infects more than 500 million people each year and kills more than one million people, according to WHO. However, Malaria is preventable and curable.
The World Health Assembly instituted World Malaria Day in May 2007. The purpose of the event is to give countries in affected regions the chance to learn from each other’s experiences and support one another’s efforts. World Malaria Day also enables new donors to join in a global partnership against malaria, and for research and academic institutions to reveal scientific advances to the public. The day also gives international partners, companies and foundations a chance to showcase their efforts and reflect on how to scale up what has worked.
When many people think of the chemist in the white lab coat, they are bound to picture a White male.
But, there are Black women who have greatly contributed to the science of chemistry.
The world of chemistry affects all of our lives on a daily basis.
In the medicines we take; hair care products, such as shampoos, conditioners, and hair colors; fertilizers for our plants; cleaners for dishes, clothes, floors, and our vehicles; the dyes used in the clothes we wear; even in the preparation and preservation of the foods we eat as we bake a pie or a cake or cook meat and vegetables for dinner.
Many people have given their gifts of insight and knowledge to the field of chemistry. One such lady is Ms. Marie Maynard Daly. Ms. Daly is best known for being the first Black American woman to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States and the first Black American woman to receive a doctoral degree, which she earned from Columbia University in 1947, for her thesis A Study of the Products Formed by the Action of Pancreatic Amylase on Corn Starch (1947).
She also conducted pioneering research on the effects of hypertension (high blood pressure) and blockage in arteries leading to a better understanding of how heart attacks are caused.
Marie Maynard Daley, chemist (b. April 16, 1921 – d. October 28, 2003). Marie M. Daly was born on April 16, 1921, in Corona, Queens, New York. She was raised in an education-oriented family, and Ms. Daly quickly received her B.S. and M.S. in biochemistry at Queens College and New York University. After completing her Ph.D. at Columbia—and becoming the first Black American woman to obtain a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States—Ms. Daly taught and conducted research.
Background
The pioneering scientist and future chemist was the first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States, and her groundbreaking work helped clarify how the human body works.
Ms. Daly came from a family who believed strongly in the power of education. Her father, Ivan C. Daly, had emigrated from the West Indies as a young man and enrolled at Cornell University to study chemistry. A lack of money blocked his path, however, and he was forced to quit college, instead returning to New York City where he found work as a postal clerk.
Ms. Daly’s mother, Helen, grew up in Washington, D.C., and came from a family of readers. She spent long hours reading to her daughter, and fostered Marie’s love of books—in particular those that centered on science and scientists.
Higher Education
After graduating from Hunter College High School, an all-girls institution in New York City, Ms. Daly attended Queens College in Flushing, New York, choosing to live at home in order to save money.
Ms. Daly graduated with honors in 1942 and, to get around the fact that she didn’t have much money for graduate school, landed work as a lab assistant at her old college as well as a hard-earned fellowship. Both were instrumental in helping her to cover the costs of getting a graduate degree in chemistry from New York University.
Ms. Daly didn’t waste time in completing her studies. She finished her master’s degree in just a year and then, in 1944, enrolled at Columbia University as a doctoral student. Aided by her own ambition and intelligence, Ms. Daly was further helped by timing. World War II was at its peak, and employers were looking for women to fill the jobs left by the scores of men who’d been sent overseas to fight. In addition, Columbia’s chemistry program was being led by Dr. Mary L. Caldwell, a renowned scientist who helped blaze new trails for women in chemistry throughout her career.
Receives Ph.D.
At Columbia, Ms. Daly took to the lab, studying how the body’s chemicals help digest food. She finished her doctorate—unknowingly making history as the first female African American to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States—in 1947. Fascinated by the human body’s complicated inner workings, Ms. Daly landed a grant in 1948 from the American Cancer Society. This was the start of a seven-year research program at the Rockefeller Institute of Medicine, where Ms. Daly examined how proteins are constructed in the body.
Researcher and Activist
In 1955, Ms. Daly returned to Columbia, working closely with Dr. Quentin B. Deming on the causes of heart attacks. Their groundbreaking work, which was later relocated to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York, disclosed the relationship between high cholesterol and clogged arteries. That work opened up a new understanding of how foods and diet can affect the health of the heart and the circulatory system.
In addition to her research work at Einstein, Ms. Daly also taught biochemistry courses. Recognizing the importance of her own career path, Ms. Daly championed efforts to get students of color enrolled in medical schools and graduate science programs. In 1988 she started a scholarship, in honor of her father, for minority students who want to study science at Queens College. Her career milestones include the following: serving as an instructor in Physical Science at Howard University between 1947-48; an Associate at the Columbia University Research Service of the Goldwater Memorial Hospital, from 1955-59; Assistant Professor (1960-1971) and Associate Professor (1971-1986) of Biochemistry and Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, an Investigator for the American Heart Association (1958-63), and elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Ms. Daly retired from Albert Einstein College in 1986. Her many honors included induction into Phi Beta Kappa as well as being tapped as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Ms. Daly, who married Vincent Clark in 1961 and whose full married name was Marie Maynard Daly Clark, died in New York City on October 28, 2003.
World Book and Copyright Day is an occasion to celebrate the contribution of books and authors to our global culture and the connection between copyright and books.
April 23 marks the anniversary of the birth or death of a range of well-known writers, including Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Maurice Druon, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Haldor Kiljan Laxness, Manuel Mejía Vallejo, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and William Shakespeare. For this reason, UNESCO’s General Conference chose this date to pay tribute to books, the authors who wrote them, and the copyright laws that protect them.
People of all ages take the time to appreciate books and their authors on World Book and Copyright Day.
A range of activities to promote reading and the cultural aspects of books are held all over the world. Many of these emphasize international cooperation or friendships between countries. Events include: relay readings of books and plays; the distribution of bookmarks; the announcement of the winners of literary competitions; and actions to promote the understanding of laws on copyright and the protection of authors’ intellectual property.
In some years, the Children’s and Young People’s Literature in the Service of Tolerance is awarded. This is a prize for novels, collections of short stories or picture books that promote tolerance, peace, mutual understanding and respect for other peoples and cultures. There are two categories: one for books aimed at children aged up to 12 years; and one for those aimed at young people aged 13 to 18 years.
Purpose of the day
World Book and Copyright Day is an occasion to pay a worldwide tribute to books and authors and to encourage people to discover the pleasure of reading. It is hoped that this will lead to the renewed respect for those who have made irreplaceable contributions to social and cultural progress. In some years, the UNESCO Prize for Children’s and Young People’s Literature in the Service of Tolerance is awarded. It is also hoped that World Book and Copyright Day will increase people’s understanding of and adherence to copyright laws and other measures to protect intellectual copyright.
Background
The year 1995 was named the United Nations Year for Tolerance and UNESCO’s General Conference, held in Paris, concentrated on this theme. The delegates voted to establish an annual occasion to carry the message of tolerance into the future, in the form of a day to celebrate books, authors and the laws that protect them. The date was chosen because April 23 marks the anniversary of the birth or death of a range of internationally renowned writers and because of the Catalan traditions surrounding this day. In Catalonia, a region of Spain, April 23 is known as La Diada de Sant Jordi (St George’s Day) and it is traditional for sweethearts to exchange books and roses. World Book and Copyright Day has been held annually since 1995.
Symbols
Each year a poster is designed and distributed around the world. It features images designed to encourage people, particularly children, to read books and appreciate literature. There is also a logo for World Book and Copyright Day. It features a circle, representing the world, and two books, one of which is open.
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 