← Previous

Page 362 of 2211

Next →

1 ... 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 ... 2211

a lot of great informations about humana - www.humana.org :)

Sorry Jummo, I didn't realize you wanted me to answer your questions, as you answered them yourself. I don't know if it is because you want to know more or because you want to argue, but here you have my point of view:

Q: So you're saying that if you are a member of the TG you're not allowed to get a salary??

A: No, I am saying there is a common economy in TG. And the deal is to leave all salary you get and even all other things you own to TG. If you inherit money or land it goes to TG. Some 50 pounds you'll have for pocket money. Of course it is said that you can get as much as you want, but at the same tima you are supposed to live cheaply. If you are arguing for really a lot more than the others, there would be discussions. And nobody wants discussions about themselves... So before joining things are explained to you. It is not a surprise for the one involving oneself. Clothes you get from the Casablanca-factory, you dont have to worry about clothes, food or anything else private. Everything is common. But ALL is not explained. What happens with the part of the salary you give away? One can live with not having much, as long as you see the point of it. E.g.: There IS no money. But when there start to occur to you that some people in this hierarchical system live under totally different conditions than others (all are said to be comrades in the very same group, though), then I see no point no more.

Q: Don't I have the right to do with my private money as I please, as long as it doesn't break the law??

A: Of course you have! You can play bingo! Buy candy! You can buy cigarettes if you prefer, and let all your money burn away. And make Mr Marlboro-man richer. But the difference is, that there is a warning-text on the cigarette packages about what consequences you might have in your life if you smoke.

 

Q: Witchhunt, let Tvind do what they do best, development work and taking care of the young people in Denmark that the communes cannot handle. Where would these students go if Tvind was nonexistant??

A: Tvind is ONE alternative to troubled youth. And if the intentions of everyone in TG were as good as yours, there would be nothing more to say. Think of where you have heard all this about Tvind schools being the only real solution for the kids? Probably it was somebody IN the organisation claiming this.

Sigge

this what are you doing SLANDER !!! DO STH, DON'T WAISTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY FOR THIS SHIT GREETINGS WE WILL STILL GO ON MY PUPILS :O

VWhile the peace process in Guatemala continues to gather momentum and violence diminishes in the large cities, in the countryside Indian groups seeking to establish title to their communal lands still often encounter virulent opposition. Campaigns that use media slander instead of bullets, but nevertheless recall the intimidation of the 1980s, seem now the preferred approach.

The village of Tampur, in the Panzos Municipality of the northeastern department of Alta Verapaz, is the scene of one such incident. For several years now, the families of Tampur have been meeting in a full discussion process that has led to the communal building of a bridge and a school. This communal work strengthened in many of the families a deep sense of shared interest in their community, in the prosperity of their fields and forests and their future together as Kekchi Maya people with a common language, a common culture and, increasingly again, a common sense of spirituality and the future.

The elders of Tampur and the community-elected leadership have in recent years sought and achieved collaboration in projects with a Maya-based organization working in the region, ADEEC, which Indigenous people of Guatemala set up in the mid-1980s to seek assistance in community development efforts. Having had some acquaintance over the years with the work ADEEC (Association for Economic, Educational and Cultural Development), particularly in their partnership with the Tampur, I was surprised to read in Guatemala's national dailies about deadly conflicts occurring in that community. I had known of an intense land issue which the newly elected committee was addressing, but I was fully alarmed when a friend sent me clippings from one of the Guatemalan national newspapers that not only reported three dead, 16 wounded and houses burned, but actually named the leader of that village, Miguel Chun (don Meq), a man I have known over the years, as the perpetrator of the acts. Don Roderico Teni, director of ADEEC, and a noted speaker on cultural development, was also attacked for introducing an "agitating" NGO into the community.

Right: Mayan work group works collectively to achieve community development objectives. Photo: Courtesy of Jose Barreiro. Judging from the virulence and frequency of the media attacks, which began in October of last year, Teni surmised for me that a group of people who had been caught selling lands illegally were directing the campaign. They largely blamed the "foreign" NGO for the trouble, while also accusing and threatening the community leaders. "Radio Verapaz," the departmental radio station, broadcast the first report to that effect all over northern Guatemala in November. There followed immediately the report claiming the "three deaths, 16 wounded, burned houses, hundreds of refugees," that lent a dangerous tone to the shrillness of the attack while yet another radio report called for "security forces" to intervene.

Headlined articles with similar accusations began to appear next in national newspapers. ADEEC personnel and Tampur leaders were stunned to see the wildly accusatory articles that appeared in Prensa Libre (12/27/96) and Siglo XXI (12/28/96), the former reiterating the supposed three deaths and the latter announcing the arrest of four community leaders, including don Meq. An incident of miscommunication in November was mentioned, when the governor and the retired general (now a Deputy of the National Congress) were disarmed by local Tampur authorities when they were brought to the community by the ousted group under suspicious circumstances.

Suddenly, with the departmental governor, the deputy to the National Congress and the group from Tampur denouncing the "violent acts" committed in the village by the new "recalcitrant Indians," with Miguel Chun cited as "perpetrator" and Roderico Teni as "intellectual author," it appeared to the ADEEC team that their space to operate development projects and work directly with communities was closing. Severe danger lurked as for six weeks the press chorus blamed a "foreign NGO" for a community movement "that took the law into its own hands."

The journalists who filed these fabricated stories (no deaths were documented or even actually reported to police), Eduardo Sam Aldana and Ramiro Gonzalez, succeeded in throwing the community into alert and forcing don Meq and the professional staff of ADEEC, all dismayed by the magnitude of the lies and accusations, to respond as quickly and as forcefully as possible. Nevertheless, before it was over, numerous articles, some clearly libelous and likely paid for, had appeared in several national Guatemalan dailies. These painted the "indigenas" of Tampur as a violent and rebellious lot, prone to committing criminal acts that would require "the intervention of security forces."

Fortunately for ADEEC, don Meq and the families of Tampur, their moment of tension occurs in 1996-1997, as the national political climate of Guatemala shifts toward a peaceful resolution of conflicts. Their story, which I and many other international friends had witnessed over the years, already had a degree of exposure. And they have a tenacious and capable alliance of people who understand their work. Thus a stream of depositions, press releases and invitations to journalists, lawyers and judges, the governor and several national agencies went out to respond to the public charges, and a small community that has united to achieve a self-determined development reality was able to fight back in the public eye.

"Most everything in the stories was a planted calumny," Teni recounted. "In fact, we had worked for weeks to counsel peaceful and legal resolution to the conflicts over the land. The community leaders invited many groups and people to an open forum, where the reality of the case could be heard."

"We are peaceful, hard-working people of the land," don Meq's deposition read. "All we want is fair distribution and preservation of our communal lands."

As in all Indian communities in Guatemala, complaints of illegal land sales and growing cases of complete dispossession of community member families from their working lands, had created hardship and hostility in Tampur. When intense participatory discussion surfaced as the community worked together on the ADEEC-sponsored bridge and school building, it led to an open call by the families for more information and education on their legal rights. The elders and leaders of Tampur dusted off the community's legality and title, granted by an agency of the national government in the 1970s, defining Tampur as a Collective Agrarian Patrimony in the names of some 210 family heads. As the community became more exactingly aware how lands had been sold, and by whom, and as the group in power resisted, the community consensus called for large informational meetings.

The present political opening in Guatemala facilitates legal information to communities that seek it vigorously and soon Tampur had held full assemblies of all its membership, held elections on a new village committee, and in 1995, elected its new president (don Miguel Chun) and, with this new committee in place, called on the assistance of legal professionals to sort out twenty years of transactions that had reduced their lands.

The problem lined up like this: about 15 men representing as many families--the core group of descendants of a German immigrant in the largely Kekchi region--had moved into position within Tampur by the 1970s and appropriated the village committee and its power as a personal patrimony over the rest of the community. These few, who are clearly identifiable in the obvious ethnic reality of this Guatemalan Indian region, had exclusive access to Spanish language materials--as no one else in the village was literate enough in Spanish to read the documents-- and ingratiated itself to the repressive system--via connections with the now-disbanded military commissions and civil patrols and with some unscrupulous merchants in the nearby ladino trading center of la Tinta given to strong-arm methods.

As don Meq, an alert and well-respected village cacique (chief), who even now speaks only Kekchi (although he accompanies himself with a couple of Spanish speaking community members), began to press for a new measurement of the community lands and to re-enfranchise excluded member families to their proper planting and wood gathering areas, the group of fifteen (voted out of power unanimously by the other 200 families) responded with the virulence and aggression systematized in Guatemala over so many years. As cases of illegal land sales emerged in the documentation and testimony, the pervasive system of "violence as an option" resurfaced.

It began with the openly bought press misinformation and intimidation and went on to produce midnight phone calls to the ADEEC office threatening death to its director, don Roderico Teni. Teni, a Kekchi man with impressive professional accomplishments and a deeply rooted background in the traditional village culture, responded with well-reasoned letters to the media that described the work of ADEEC.

As threats and counterthreats escalated in the community, don Meq generally cooled the hotter heads, but as the individuals earlier ousted from office occasioned some beatings of people after a bout of drunkenness, the community prevailed on don Meq to close a family-run speak-easy where the incident occurred. Almost the whole community turned out. A litany of incidents, from the slashing of whole cornfields to the vandalism of tree nurseries, compounded the hostilities to the point that the accused families left Tampur and took refuge in the Catholic church in the nearby town of la Tinta. There, the local priest called for collections to feed "over 800 refugees," nearly 20 times the actual number, bringing some needed humor to the case.

 

Left: Foot bridge into Mayan community opened outside access but not encroachment. Photo: Courtesy of Jose Barreiro.

Finally, on February 19, nearly one thousand people of Tampur hosted 200 representatives of government agencies, the media, local tribunals, as well as the governor of the department, Dr. Jorge Mendez Castaeda. At the huge meeting, the community consensus became transparent, documentation revealed the facts, and with a generous offer to reincorporate the families who had left, closure to the public confusion in the case, first introduced by the corrupt reporting, finally resolved the issue.

For ADEEC personnel and for the leadership of Tampur, the stressful season of recrimination has given way to new vistas. Tampur is in a unique cultural and geographic situation that could provide a regional, maybe a national Guatemalan Indian model of sustainable community development. As in many Indian villages of the region, the overwhelming majority of the families still work together in communal "tareas," or tasks, agreed to by the elders and community leaders. The strong family networks are supported by an indigenous Maya agricultural spiritual system, the "Calendario," their cropping of corn and beans and other species, their many uses of medicinal plants and their general cultural predilection for harmonizing with nature--all are factors that have responded positively to the rural sustainable village development method undertaken by ADEEC.

Throughout the department of Alta Verapaz, in north-central Guatemala, the Kekchi-speaking Mayas number approximately 400,000 people in nearly one thousand village-communities. The municipality of Panzos is home to some 50,000 Kekchi, 95 percent of which are village-dwelling corn farming people. Comprised of some 215 families, or about 1,200 people, Tampur is a leading village. Located along the southern shore of the Polochic River, it is the base community in a network of some 30 remote villages that extend south to the Sierra de Minas mountain range, in a watershed that runs east to Lake Izabal and the Caribbean coast.

During the comprehensive, day-long meeting on February 19, human rights and legal investigators determined, upon reviewing all the evidence, that in fact there had been a misinformation campaign and that the process of electing a new village committee, the actions of don Meq as its president--including the analysis of land tenancy in the village--were completely in order and according to law.

"The activity was a success," reported "Radio Verapaz," in the words of a government representative about the unique assembly session the representatives witnessed in Tampur, where over one thousand neighbors (the overwhelming majority of the village) laid out food and flooring of fresh pine boughs in the village square for the visitors. "A number of the families returned, reconciliation was achieved in many cases, and the community is obviously happy with itself, in a tranquil atmosphere, working the land."

"ADEEC, like any NGO," said the governor to the radio reporter, "has the right to conduct and manifest its work, in any situation."

"People were able to see that even when the legal framework is in place nationally, the real system that still operates in these villages easily turns against Indians," director Teni said. "Right now, we are coming out of a dark tunnel. But there is light ahead, the sun is ahead. The people of Tampur have made themselves heard."

A small step, perhaps, in a small river village called Tampur, but in Guatemala, among Mayans at least, all hope endures.

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Jos Barreiro is associate director of extension, American Indian Program at Cornell University.

check this out www.darknet.dk/~avatar/hexan/taliban.swf

Down with corrupt Charities nd CULTs bob

Down with corrupt Charities nd CULTs bob

After alot of consideration after reading this site I'm going to write to my MP. Organisations like this give Charities a bad name

Sigge, why are you avoiding answering on my questions to you??

 

Jummo

Why do Tvindies have to have Amdi, why don't they just create smaller groups amongst themselves. Can they do this? Or is the Tvind leadership too powerful? And has total control over the money?

To Sigge

Sorry that you are unhappy with TG, but that doesn not make everyone else a liar....

Sigge, yes I am in TG I have posted my email here before: less_thanaw@yahoo.com You sound like you have left recently, thats what I am about to do. I just wanted to talk to you about it.... L.

Comments on previous...

You are telling the TG-way is not an efficient way of earning money. No, but you are right, an out of ordinary way it sure is. I am surprised that you dont think it is not smart too.

So you lived on water and bread? Well, I am sorry but isnt that a little bit to exaggerate? And now you are playing golf, laying on the beach, mountain climbing, going to concerts and theatre while starting up schools and projects and TV-channels pfiuubusy life indeed. Somehow I dont know if youve identified yourself that strongly with TG that you dont even see a difference with yourself and the whole groupI mean, did YOU start OWC up???? While eating bread only? And now things are so much better that you can play golf too? I am sorry, but I dont believe you have played much golf at all! Oh, you might mean the whole TG and not only yourself?? Well, some people in TG ARE obviously playing golf. But if it is a person that once upon a time had connections with the schools I am not so sure of. And if you would think twice youd realize this thing you are writing is not really even half a truth.

I like living a good life as well. And I agree that the values you mentioned are not so bad: Working with other people and doing something worthwhile. Materially good standards and not so much worries about that I dont think many people have in this part of the world. Whether you are outside or inside TG. Unless you insist on dieting on bread and water of course. Something that in my opinion also is characterizing a good life: Honesty. And sorry, my friend, there is not much of that neither in your posting nor in TG.

I have a suggestion...why don't you have a common meeting with your pals and suggest a year or two off and you'll find out what I mean.

Sigge

 

 

Regarding "recruiting"

I would love to "recruit" many more people! There is plenty to do and more people needed!. I like it very much and believe many others would do so as well.

I am happy to hear that you call Humana a recruiting machine. Great!!!! That shows that it is something quite good and out of the ordnary going on there!! An obviously not something where people get exploited. I do not want be exploited and I certainly not consider myself being it.

I have a great time and an ocean of good friends and opportunities to work for something that I enjoy.

TG is great for me and I think that Humana and The Travelling folk highschools are achieving something good.

If TG would not have anything in their heart except earning money why go through all the hard work it is to establish Humana, Travelling Folkhigh schools, to start TCE up, build a One World TV channel and so on.....

It is not the most efficient way to earn money in this world. Not a very smart "business" is it??

That then, after many years of hard work we also decide that we do not want to live on water and bread any longer is that bad?????

I would like to live a good life. A god life i consider being: *Doing something worthwhile *Work together with other people *Having a material good life as well where i do not need to worry about my basic material needs. And just like many other people in this world do I appreciate relaxing inbetween. Enjoy a beach and a nice surrounding, playing golf, running, walk a mountain, go to a concert, theatre etc etc.

But there is a general understanding at this website that doing good does not equal with living good. No, the only way you can do good is to live on water and bread? Or to give all your own earnings to others, for example volunteers that have a big urge to join a Development Instructor program. i have done that for many years, by working without a salary, and do not want to do it anylonger

What about the "poor volunteers having to pay" at the Travelling Folkhighschools, you might ask? Plus that they need to fundraise!! Outrageous you might think? I do not think so. I think it is a great opportunity to learn, work and experience together with other people. Why should they not pay and fundraise? The money fundraised at most of the Travelling Folkhigh schools goes to the running of the schools. Where should the money come from?? They have to be sustainable. Able to make their economy ad up and balance.

Regardless if someone that once upon a time, that really do not have any ties or control over an activity at a Travelling Folkhigh school, would have a golf membership or not.

If anyone want to join the programs at one of the Travelling Folkhigh schools they have to consider if that is program that they want to do or not. It is a choice they individually has to make. I believe that it is a great opportunity for many people. I enjoyed it, i know many others that did.

So therefore I STRONGLY ADVICE YOU TO SERISOULY CONSIDER TO JOIN UP!!!!!!

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to recruit here!

Check out the websites www.drh-movement.org and www.humana.org

NB. As a TG member do you not give your monthly salary away. you CHOSE to put it together with others. One alone cant do as much as many together. I have never felt like Sigge saying she gave her money away.

 

 

 

 

Just to let you know 11 peopel have walked out of hull due to the way things were run at the school (eg poor diet, bullying,demorolizing,no time to think,no heating,pushing you to work long hours,threatening behaviour,taking away choice and fredom of speach.) The point im trying to make they lie to peopel to sighn them up with no questions,then make there life a living hell and still getting away with it.This scool must stop praying on inocent peopel therefore must be stoped.

I just received this today. A chilling read, certainly thought provoking, and it would be good to find out more about John Pilger's claims.

 

Inevitable Ring to the Unimaginable

By John Pilger

 

 

If the attacks on America have their source in the Islamic world, who can really be surprised?

Two days earlier, eight people were killed in southern Iraq when British and American planes bombed civilian areas. To my knowledge, not a word appeared in the mainstream media in Britain.

An estimated 200,000 Iraqis, according to the Health Education Trust in London, died during and in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter known as the Gulf War.

This was never news that touched public consciousness in the west.

At least a million civilians, half of them children, have since died in Iraq as a result of a medieval embargo imposed by the United States and Britain.

In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Mujadeen, which gave birth to the fanatical Taliban, was largely the creation of the CIA.

The terrorist training camps where Osama bin Laden, now "America's most wanted man", allegedly planned his attacks, were built with American money and backing.

In Palestine, the enduring illegal occupation by Israel would have collapsed long ago were it not for US backing.

Far from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been its victims - principally the victims of US fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms, military, strategic and economic, is the greatest source of terrorism on earth.

This fact is censored from the Western media, whose "coverage" at best minimises the culpability of imperial powers. Richard Falk, professor of international relations at Princeton, put it this way: "Western foreign policy is presented almost exclusively through a self-righteous, one-way legal/moral screen (with) positive images of Western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political violence."

That Tony Blair, whose government sells lethal weapons to Israel and has sprayed Iraq and Yugoslavia with cluster bombs and depleted uranium and was the greatest arms supplier to the genocidists in Indonesia, can be taken seriously when he now speaks about the "shame" of the "new evil of mass terrorism" says much about the censorship of our collective sense of how the world is managed.

One of Blair's favourite words - "fatuous" - comes to mind. Alas, it is no comfort to the families of thousands of ordinary Americans who have died so terribly that the perpetrators of their suffering may be the product of Western policies. Did the American establishment believe that it could bankroll and manipulate events in the Middle East without cost to itself, or rather its own innocent people?

The attacks on Tuesday come at the end of a long history of betrayal of the Islamic and Arab peoples: the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the foundation of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and 34 years of Israel's brutal occupation of an Arab nation: all, it seems, obliterated within hours by Tuesday's acts of awesome cruelty by those who say they represent the victims of the West's intervention in their homelands.

"America, which has never known modern war, now has her own terrible league table: perhaps as many as 20,000 victims."

 

As Robert Fisk points out, in the Middle East, people will grieve the loss of innocent life, but they will ask if the newspapers and television networks of the west ever devoted a fraction of the present coverage to the half-a-million dead children of Iraq, and the 17,500 civilians killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The answer is no. There are deeper roots to the atrocities in the US, which made them almost inevitable.

It is not only the rage and grievance in the Middle East and south Asia. Since the end of the cold war, the US and its sidekicks, principally Britain, have exercised, flaunted, and abused their wealth and power while the divisions imposed on human beings by them and their agents have grown as never before.

An elite group of less than a billion people now take more than 80 per cent of the world's wealth.

In defence of this power and privilege, known by the euphemisms "free market" and "free trade", the injustices are legion: from the illegal blockade of Cuba, to the murderous arms trade, dominated by the US, to its trashing of basic environmental decencies, to the assault on fragile economies by institutions such as the World Trade Organisation that are little more than agents of the US Treasury and the European central banks, and the demands of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in forcing the poorest nations to repay unrepayable debts; to a new US "Vietnam" in Colombia and the sabotage of peace talks between North and South Korea (in order to shore up North Korea's "rogue nation" status).

Western terror is part of the recent history of imperialism, a word that journalists dare not speak or write.

The expulsion of the population of Diego Darcia in the 1960s by the Wilson government received almost no press coverage.

 

Their homeland is now an American nuclear arms dump and base from which US bombers patrol the Middle East.

In Indonesia, in 1965/6, a million people were killed with the complicity of the US and British governments: the Americans supplying General Suharto with assassination lists, then ticking off names as people were killed.

"Getting British companies and the World Bank back in there was part of the deal", says Roland Challis, who was the BBC's south east Asia correspondent.

British behaviour in Malaya was no different from the American record in Vietnam, for which it proved inspirational: the withholding of food, villages turned into concentration camps and more than half a million people forcibly dispossessed.

In Vietnam, the dispossession, maiming and poisoning of an entire nation was apocalyptic, yet diminished in our memory by Hollywood movies and by what Edward Said rightly calls cultural imperialism.

In Operation Phoenix, in Vietnam, the CIA arranged the homicide of around 50,000 people. As official documents now reveal, this was the model for the terror in Chile that climaxed with the murder of the democratically elected leader Salvador Allende, and within 10 years, the crushing of Nicaragua.

All of it was lawless. The list is too long for this piece.

Now imperialism is being rehabilitated. American forces currently operate with impunity from bases in 50 countries.

"Full spectrum dominance" is Washington's clearly stated aim.

Read the documents of the US Space Command, which leaves us in no doubt.

In this country, the eager Blair government has embarked on four violent adventures, in pursuit of "British interests" (dressed up as "peacekeeping"), and which have little or no basis in international law: a record matched by no other British government for half a century.

What has this to do with this week's atrocities in America? If you travel among the impoverished majority of humanity, you understand that it has everything to do with it.

People are neither still, nor stupid. They see their independence compromised, their resources and land and the lives of their children taken away, and their accusing fingers increasingly point north: to the great enclaves of plunder and privilege. Inevitably, terror breeds terror and more fanaticism.

But how patient the oppressed have been.

It is only a few years ago that the Islamic fundamentalist groups, willing to blow themselves up in Israel and New York, were formed, and only after Israel and the US had rejected outright the hope of a Palestinian state, and justice for a people scarred by imperialism.

Their distant voices of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway brutalised places have at last come home.

 

 

John Pilger is an award-winning journalist.

September 13, 2001

 

 

__________________________________________________

 

About the Amdi-picture!

I agree, it is not relevant if the picture is real or manipulated. In fact...Amdi looks like the picture. Maybe not that old, but still! One can recognize him from it.

Sigge

So you're saying that if you are a member of the TG you're not allowed to get a salary??

If I start up a company, I have to right to have a salary, even if the money from the salary comes from my own company, and if I sell products to the state, it doesn't matter.

Now I'm not equalising the schools with companys, but still it's the same; you're saying that as a techar you don't have the right to have a salary IF you decide to use the money commonly..

Don't I have the right to do with my private money as I please, as long as it doesn't break the law??

Witchhunt, let Tvind do what they do best, development work and taking care of the young people in Denmark that the communes cannot handle. Where would these students go if Tvind was nonexistant?? We had one boy who came from a (state) psychiatric centre, so full of drugs that he was like a zombie. The reasno for that was that they couldn't handle him, when he came here we called his doctor and asked if we could remove the drugs, and he said yes. so we did, the first night he smashed his room completely, second night he smashed all the windows on his building, after a while when he realised that we actually cared about him he started to settle down, we gave him some responsibilities like running the windmill during the night and he really liked that, now he's even started to study and get up in the mornings (except when he's running the windmill). There's more to the story but this was the short version.

There's a lot of "happy" stories about kids that now works fine, there's alot of "unhappy" stories too, but the absolute majority is positive ones.

 

 

Jummo

The list of Tvind companies on Tvind Alert has been revised and brought up to date - we have added details of an extra 20 or so from all kinds of countries including Kazakhstan, Rusia and west Africa. The total at the moment is: 114.

A lot of the new companies are in the USA, trading in used clothes. Look especially at U'SAgain, Garson & Shaw Inc, Gaia, CoMore bv.

There must be many, many hundreds more.

If anybody has information about these companies or the names and addresses and directorships of any others, anywhere, please pass the information on to Tvind Alert so we can publish it. Thanks

The picture of Amdi.

Tvind Alert has heard the picture is supposed to be from a credit card application

I do not read Danish, however, even I can see that there is something suspicious about this picture, as Ekstra Bladet reports. I am going to put a link to Ekstra Bladet's report so people can make up their own minds.

So - maybe some unscrupulous photographer in the USA who knows how much he'll earn has been tempted to make a lot of money, and maybe Jylland-Posten has been completely taken in. But it is only a picture - it doesn't matter what he looks like. He must look something like this. Let's forget this picture and get back to the main point - what is this man, whatever he looks like, doing living in luxury on a private tropical island off Miami??

The money Humana money is one thing. TG money another. Yes and no. There has been questions here on this page whether 3rd world projects is an efficient way of making money. Of course it is efficient! It is a recruiting-machine. There is a lot of people out there who want to "do good". Some of them go throwing bricks on the police when on demonstrations. Others want to "roll up their sleeves" as the TG-language says, and do some work.

The 3rd world projects has been an argument for some recent posters, who I presume being TG-members. It is obvious they think that they are doing some important work. This is a big point. Otherwise these people would not keep giving not only of their monthly salary, but of their daily time and the right of thinking freely.

Imagine what power this gives to a man like Amdi who without blinking uses this TG-peoples lives in the purpous of...WHAT? Projects?? There is of course money in the projects, but not that much. All TG-members are aware of that the TG money is not humana-money. Their salary goes to TG and they have to work more to get more money into the projects.

But you who wrote about RESULTS, you who asked about what we/I have accomplished in our lives (probably meaning you have a feeling that you've accomplished a lot)... Why don't you start thinkinig about WHY you put your money into Amdi's bucket? I mean, what are your real reasons? Are you really thinking you are not able to accomplish anything outside TG? Are you personally impressed by and trusting Amdi? Maybe he gave you once some good words on your way, a present, something that meant much to you...? Are you really thinking TG is something special, giving you possibilities that you wouldn't have otherwise? Well, the price is just so high. And I understand if you cannot see it now. It takes some time to get out of lies and selflies. The feeling of being fooled is not very pleasant.

So, if you want to avoid truth some more, work on. But stop dragging more peole into it. (Which you of course don't stop, as part of your work is recruiting, recruiting...)

sigh

Sigge

So "TG is a private group of people putting their earnings together....." Fine, but where does this money come from? Do they go out and work and earn money from Ford, Nokia, Eriksson, the town coucil, a corner shop? No, in most cases they work for Tvind. And where does Tvind get its money from? The public. That is at the heart of the big fallacy that TG people are clubbing together with 'their own' money. The money just goes around and around. It is other people's money, that Tvind has conned well-meaning citizens and charities and governments to hand over in the belief it is doing a humanitarian job.

Open your eyes, TG members. Come back to the real world. Common time, common money, common work, common delusion.

www.worldonline.dk/~dddc/amdi.pcx

Study the picture....

Check out this article (in Danish) by Ekstrabladet that says that the photo on a certain person that Tvindalert have pointed out as leader or Guru for the so called Tvind empire.

Criminal assistant and leader of the Danish Photograppical section at the National Police says that the picture has been manipulated.

The leader of the Animation department at the Danish films school tells the same.

Further do they explain that the picture is probably made out of 2,3 or more pictures.

Maybe you AntiTvind people are about getting desperate?? So many years of claiming that Tvind is evil, stealing money, brainwash, not doing a good work etc etc etc and there has been nothing that you can prove has been done illegal and more and more places you turn in the world. More and more people do you find appreciate the work done by people from the TG

 

The link http://www.eb.dk/VisArtikel.iasp?PageID=142714

 

 

 

 

 

TG is a private group of people putting their earnings together. it is their PRIVATE earnings and not Humanas. In the same way does not Humanas money belong to these private people, but to the organization and its purpose

To the previuous posting.

It is easy enough to say that "Humanas money does not go where it is supposed to".

But please think rationally. It is close to 200 projects run by Humana. It has been quite some critical eyes looking upon how the money is spent for many years, and they havent found anything that really is not as it should be. It IS many, many people that thinks Humana does a very good work.

Visit www.drh-movement.org and www.humana.org for more relevant information

Furter. If any of you ever donate to a Humana, to one of the Travelling Folk high schools can I tell you that it is safe. I have personally seen and worked at several projects and know many that have done the same and are satisfied with how it is run.

the one here telling that the donated money goes to some luxury places do not have a clue about what he is talking about

 

First, it is not clear that Humana is doing a good job in third world countries...there is no independent evaluation of the programs. The one thing that is clear, is that the same old problems are made over and over. Second, it matters what the TG is doing with its money comes from people who are donating to a charity in order to help people. If you are going to beg on the streets to help the third world and beg for free food and beg for free accomindations it seems that society has an interest in knowing what the money is going to.

Yes Humana has accomplished a lot....but living in luxury apartments is not what most people who donate think they are supporting.

Why is it so important to know what the TG is doing with their money? It their own business. Is it not much more interesting to know that Humana is really doing a good job in third world countries?

I suspect that quite some people in the UN organs are quite wealthy. But they do not put their salaries together, so they are not "criminal as Tvind".

When many people put their salaries together THAT THEY HAVE EARNT BY WORKING, can a lot be done. It also create reactions.

 

 

I think that this site is a proof of that people in the TG has achieved quite some remarcableble results.

A bunch of people, starting about 30 years ago put their money together to do something.

Today we see Humana,schools, private enterprizes, farms and many activities.

Great achievemnt!

Yes, how stupid of me. Despite the fact that the leader of the TG is living a luxurious lifestyle based on the donations to the 3rd world, we should just shut up and get to work like all good Tvind-ites......I guess it is better to accomplish the enrichment of a total bastard than to try and stop this abuse. Again, mea culpa I'm so sorry.

Don't you people have anything better to do with your lives then to complain about a group of people that aren't even concerned with yours. Come on, these people are doing something that they want to do and are doing it. How much in your life have you accomplished???????? Get a life and find something else to do then to complain about nothing.

I have no idea what criteria Agfund used to judge programs. From what I see from their webpage all it took was an application and there was little or no ground-checking. And we all know that the TG are experts in propaganda about themselves.

In terms why doesn't the TG do something else...well they do. Clearcutting lumber in Brazil and growing bananas in Belize. Also they also seem to embemzle money from their aid projects. Perhaps not the most effecient way to make money but it works. I for one would support the TG dropping the pretense of "good work" and they becoming full capitalists...at least then they would make their volunteers cynical.

Who are you asking? Somebody from TG trying to calculate out who I am? You will find out sooner or later anyway. Don't worry. Or was it of some other reason? Why do you think I will answer an anonumous poster? You tell me who you are first. Sigge

Hey Sigge. How long have you been in TG and when you left?

YES there are results. YES some people are doing good. But please, please TG-people STOP focusing only on your results. Stop rationalizing stop defending yourselves. Stop hiding the fact that there is a hidden curriculum! I know that you are aware of it. I was! But I defended it to be necessary. I thought TG was ahead of it's time, misunderstood by media etc. (still I find many of Tvind-related articles mostly ridiculous and not targeting the real problems). I hid things from students and I hid facts from those TG members that were better not to know this or that "yet". They might be new members and react in a wrong way to certain things. I never talked about Amdi to anybody. We just didn't talk about him. that meant my thoughts about him were my personal thoughts. I thought he was a fantastic man. Sure everybody else thought so as well. But as we never or seldom commented anything there was no risk for bad talk among us either. I knew he was the boss. Was it what I talked about when an outsider questioned? No. In order to let him keep the power I needed to think of him as a "good" leader. As a good example. I was listening to stories told about how fantastic he was and how hardworking, thoughtful... But never mentioned this to students. Isn't this double moral, dear old TG-friends? YES most of you are working like hell and doing a damn good work. Some of you are really clever and talented, some of you are oppressed. But please...there are so many good things one can do outside TG! I mean you act like people in a bad marriage, defending it until the last blooddrop. I don't feel any guilt of divorcing TG anymore. I am SO happy!

Sigge

I must admit I always expected to find Amdi living it up but what a absolute bastard, all that bullshit he was coming out with all those years. How many people he has conned I wonder what he really thought about the people in his organisation collecting money on the streets. Its a betrayal on a collossal scale.

I guess the AGFUND looked at the RESULTS of the TCE projects - and that's why they decided to give them the prize.

Look at the RESULTS people - and please think about it. How is it possible for HUMANA to pull off so many projects, and to develop more and more, if the money that is collected for it in the West doesn't end up where it is supposed to be?

IF the TG only wanted to make money, why would they choose to do it in such a difficult way - ripping of charities or running schools that doesn't receive any government funding. I know these TGs (or at least some of them). Most of them are dead smart and could earn big salaries in business. If amassing wealth was the only thing the TG was about - why do they bother with troublemaking youth or projects in really awkward places in the world?

I read the message ending with "Thanks for reading", and got terribly irritated. Who are you to talk about diversity? About visions? About pointing fingers at sbd else? Who are you to tell about doing good? How can you be so sure of that you (whoever in TG you are and wherever you are placed) actually ARE doing good? Yes, you can vomit even more from your statistics ripped out from "State of the world's children reports" etc showing the situation of the third world. I agree, it is terrible. But that is just a curtain covering up for what you really do...Why are you NOT telling about the endless teacher's meetings where you discuss all participant's? About the aim of all later joining the teacher's group? About the need of "upbringing" of the participants you mostly forget are adults? Your words about UN's good work blablabla is just a coward way of trying to justify your own work. Why don't you write about what you REALLY think about UN? Why don't you write what TG thinks about UN or all other organisations that are not TGs? I mean, as far as I know Amdi doesn't give a shit of people outside TG. Neither was his words about UN really uplifting as far as I can remember. What I really dislike about you TG-people is the way of deciding some things being TG-talk, some other things the things you tell to people "outside". The sort of talk that is on your leaflets, broschures, lectures, web-pages, etc. It is called propaganda. You might fool some people with your bullshit about visions, you sure don't fool me no more. How come you still haven't woke up? Too many invested years of your life to your "vision"? Count the hours you have spent on the streets begging for money! I spent alltogether NINE months on the streets. I collected around 20 000 alltogether! If that would have been for instance to Joao and Fernando and all other decent poor people in Angola, but... GOLF CLUB-memberships...Damn Amdi and Kirsten, I really thought you were nice, gorgeous people, I really looked up to you once...Now I really am angry and I hope that they'll get you and make you pay! And you with the visions...why don't you just move on yourself and see what a lie you are living on! Whoever you are, what ever mountaintop you are living on...I feel sorry for you.

People believe what they want to believe. Alot of the tvindies are in the organisation because they reject alot of the pressures of everyday life. Tvind and the comradeship and support they recieve from their friends within the organisation makes up for alot. Its a shame that such a group of people ended up in such dire straights. Amdi started out as a left winger with Marxist tendencies and he ended up living with the rich on a private island. The same mugabe was a marxist lives in a Palace and drives round in a motorcade. I will have to think about this alot what I can say is I don't believe in Politics any more

I really wonder if this will change much for Tvind. First, members of the TG will likely just discount it as yet another attack from an unfriendly world. (You'd be amazed at how much rationalization people are capable of). Second, they will claim that Amdi is not really part of their organization and that his actions are not connected even though they are. Finally, they will enter that "lets just hunker down and work" mentality and ignore what is right in front of them.

I sincerely hope that people actually take the time to stop and think about what this means but I fear that they won't. If people don't want to face the truth they will find ways to avoid it and the TG are experts in pushing aside all evidence that contradicts their worldview.

 

 

 

It is to be hoped that the thousands of young people who have given their cash, time and effort to this dreadful organization will now be reimbursed. The police should mount an international hunt world wide for Petersens cash. It should all be redistributed to the donors with interest. Petersen himself should be brought to justice in the most uncivilised country in which Tvind has so called humanitarian projects. This man does not deserve any justice in for instance Denmark. That country would probably release him after a few years, anyway. He sould also be held responsible for all the suicides in his wake.

Hi all.

Tvindalert and Jyllands posten can write whatever. We just continue to do our work as good as we can.

 

 

What happens to the schools in Africa if Tvind really falls apart (as hopefully, it will)?

In my opinion, it would be diasterous for Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe if Tvind shuts its doors with noone there to pick up the pieces. I seem to have heard that Tvind controls something like 90% of the entire school system in Mozambique alone. In my opinion, after Amdi's properties have been sold and the Tvind teachers have been given their rightfully deserved compensations, the remainder of the money in the Flleseje fund should be put into a real fund that would then be administered by someone like the Danish government, the European Union or what have you. This fund would then provide for the continous funding of Tvind's African school systems, ensuring that ALL the raised money will finally go to its intended recipients.

Peter

(btw, I'm not a big fan of Amdi's buddy Mugabe either, but I don't think it would do much good to the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans to have any schools in their country close.)

Hmm, OK. Now that it's beginning to sink in, what have the pro-Tvind writers got to say about this? Tomas? Anna? You all seem to be keeping rather quiet....

I all fairness, I have to say that it must be a humbling experience to realise that one has been so cleverly and comprehensively duped. It seems that this really has been the most impressive piece of indoctrination. Amdi, and his close associates, deserve Oscars for their performances. They really seem to have pulled the wool over people's eyes, anyone who wanted to do some good in the world could be so easily taken in. That is the biggest tragedy of all this - shattered ideals.

 

Amdi Petersen is found in luxury hideaway

Mogens Amdi Petersen, the reclusive leader of the so-called 'aid charity' Tvind, has been located in a luxury private tropical island resort off Miami, according to the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten yesterday.

Petersen is said to have a $6 million penthouse apartment at Fisher Island, one of the most exclusive resorts in the world, used as a hideaway by top sportsmen and film stars. The apartment has marble floors, five bathrooms, a Jacuzzi, a steam shower and a fitness room and was bought for him by a Tvind company for $624,000 in 1991. Petersen is an enthusiastic member of the $100,000 Fisher Island golf club. In fact, Tvind rents two apartments - one for each of Petersen's two dogs.

The newspaper's coverage begins: "Mogens Amdi Petersen, leader of the Danish Tvind organisation, is hiding on a private tropical island, while earnings from companies in The Third World and Tvind-teacher salaries keep pouring into his coffers...."

Jyllands-Posten also publishes the first photograph of 62-year old Petersen since 1979.

Story in English with links at: http://www.tvindalert.org.uk (follow links to story) and in Danish at http://www.jp.dk

 

I just visited the Tvind school in Denmark and i must say i liked it very much. Everyone was very friendly and we had a great conferance about development in the third world. What Tvind stands for i something very good and if there would be no people like the tvindalert people in this world much more would be don for the thirld world. Go Tvind, go!

ALERT! Might wanna check www.jp.dk - they've found Amdi!

So Amdi hiding on Fisher island in luxury. I bet he doesn't wear Tvindie clothes doesn't sound like he has a common economy on a $100000 per year Golf club. What about buying a spare flat for his dog. With all you Tvindies sleeping on 2nd hand mattresses. Well better late than never to find out, you all have my sympathy

Lars

P.S. btw, the Peace Corps provides full accounting and evaluation for their projects...unlike

I think the Peace corps does a lot of good work. So do we.

Regards

Tomas CCTG

Although the Peace Corps have a more formal application process and generally (although not always) looks for people with B.A.s, you need not "be qualified up to your ears". I suspect that everyone in my group would have easily qualified for the Peace corps.

Moreover, people of all ages do it. The oldest PC volunteer was 86. It's a great program for people who want to do development work and have an adventure and actually provides you with support and training.

Check it out http://www.peacecorps.gov/volunteer/faq_qualifying.cfm#q1

Lars

Hi Jimmy!

"the difference between us and the public shool is that we fix (the computers) ourselves"

All state schools in Denmark have one or more teachers there that maintain and repair networks, printers, and all their other IT eqipment. Nothing pioneering about Tvind doing this too.

"It doesn't matter much who's on the "good" side (in Afghanistan) or that the civil population suffers even further when America is fighting the terrorists... Quite fun considering that America were the ones putting the Talibans to power... How many "terrorists" have been caught since this "war on terror" started?"

You must have a pretty sick sense of humour to consider that fun, Jimmy. Anyway, the USA and the coalition partners have in fact liberated the Afghan people from their fundamentalist chauvinist "government", as you know, people are now free to watch TV, read newspapers, women can walk the streets of Kabul without hiding themselves away. Several of the terrorists have been caught or killed, and a new democratic government reprensenting all Afghanis is well under way. Just turn the news or read a newpaper! Oh right, Tvindies aren't SUPPOSED to read newspapers, as Amdi says, "they put you in such a bad mood"...

cheers,

*<:-)

PS: A cult or a sect is defined as isolating oneself in a small group of the people who share your opinions and beliefs. Sects are generally controlled by gurus that in varying degrees exert their control of the lives of the cult members, the cult members in turn cannot imagine questioning anything the guru says.

Hi Chris!

It seems like your attitude toward Tvind is that "it's okay that they do bad stuff because heck, everybody is doing it". In other words, because the US has had some shady foreign policy dealings, then it is perfectly understandable that a charity- and tax-funded private school corporation from a tiny Scandinavian country go out and throw their support behind some of the worst war criminals on the planet?!

If the Danish government were to lead any kind of foreign or educational policies that concerned me as much as Tvind's, I could write my MP and demand that this be stopped. You would be able to do the same in your country. That is what democracy is all about.

However in Tvind's case, I have no recourse when my tax dollars are being spent on questionable schemes. If Tvind was just more open with its accounts and did not own several strange holding companies on Jersey and the Isle of Man and penthouses in Miami, if it actually WERE what it claims to be, that is a charity of poor, hard-working people trying to create a better world I would have nothing but respect for Tvind.

However I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

It may well be that the Peace Corps requires you to be qualified up to your ears but at least with them you know that you are making a difference and that ALL of the funds you raise and ALL the work you do actually benefit to the intended recipients and is not spent on Utzon-designed HQs "so big that it can be seen from the moon" (Amdi Petersen) or indeed the upkeep of the old nutter himself in South Florida. Besides there are other great charities out there that don't require any particular qualifications. http://www.volunteerinternational.org/ is one.

"By the way I have never seen anything saying Tvind support the Khmer Daeng?" TG bigwig Bodil Ross travelled to Kampuchea as it were then known on a "state visit" sometime back in the seventies. When she returned she was absolutely beaming telling all the other TG members "how great these people were". You should ask some of your Tvind buddies about it, they would know.

yours, *<:-)

Hi *<:-)

"Peace Corps, the Red Cross" any other org, as I said below NORAD and co spend more money on anything but the things they are supposed to, plus you need to be qualified up to your ears for most of them, which is why Tvind is great as it offers a chance for people who want to do something to get involved regardless of their age or qualifications.

 

'- But that doesn't make supporting mass murdering dictatorships right, does it?"

No but you can not do "select pointing" either. label one then label all, else you simple say that it's okay as long as your big and can get away with it. By the way I have never seen anything saying Tvind support the Khmer Daeng?

Cheers

Chris

Hi strange smiley...

I think the haha guy was a little bit dramatic and actully I wouldn't be surpried if it was an anti tvinder who wrote it...

 

anyway.

Tvind equips all their schools with WORKING computers..." Since when do home built 386'ers qualify as working computers?! ;)

Most of the computers we have are actually >386, and considering that they all run on a terminal server (one or more servers/school) they go quite fast. we don't have the computers to play the latest games on, we use them to study on and they are not the fastest ones in the world, but they can be used.

Sometimes they don't work, the difference between us and the public shool is that we fix it ourselves, of course it might take longer time sometimes, but on the other hand, when we solve a problem together with the students we learn how to solve it, not how to look up the number to the closest computer repair guy and call it...

All the places I've been have had decent computers, some places have better ones and some worse, the schools with the best economy has of course the best computers too.

I don't see the "haha" guy say he supports the taliban anywhere, what he says, in quite rough words as I see it. "It's not enough evidence to last in a courtoom, but it's enough evidence to bomb an already completely bombed devastaded country further" these northern alliance are known for drug trafficing and general gangster behaviour, but It doesn't matter much who's on the "good" side or that the civil population suffers even further when America is fighting the terrorists... Quite fun considering that America were the ones putting the Talibans to power... How many "terrorists" have been caught since this "war on terror" started?

About brainwashing, maybe the "haha" guy belives that the entire danish system and media are against tvind...

I don't blame him... If Denmark is so democratic, how come that none of the articles we are writing in defence of the accusations being put against us gets published??

How come that when a person calls the danish embassy to ask about dns, he gets told that "Tvind has strong relationships with the scientology church and are a cult... etc" Can you show me the evidence to back that up, when an embassy makes that statement as a fact, they have to have evidence to support it, but since it's tvind it's about, no evidence is needed because everybody "knows" that tvind is bad.

About cult/sect..

Can you please provide me with your definition of cult or sect?

Money without money you can't do anything, if you have money you don't have to focus so much on money, when you don't have money you have to focus on money to be able not to focus on the money.

Some people feels that it's to much focus on the money and "hush hush hush" about where the money is going. Talk to the headmaster and get it clarified instead of going around getting your opinions from the people that "knows that the money is being sent straight to amdis bank account"

Face the problem, try to solve it, if you can't solve it, find an alternative solution.

Oh, by the way

How come the total amount of money in this country has increased, but the standard of living for more people has decreased. Does the welfare system work? take a look around you and see if it works as it should do. Where does the money go????

 

//Jimmy

But it is not so great when these wonderful, hard-working, idealistic young people are taken advantage of by a hard-core capitalist organisation that actually demands money off them just to be allowed to go out fundraising!! (finally found somewhere I could use your neat expression, Chris. It suits Tvind perfectly!) Volunteer for the Peace Corps, the Red Cross or almost ANY other charity organistaion instead of Tvind!

*<:-)

It is great that people from all place come together at a school in Denmark training for Africa!!!

Quite a unique opportunity

Danish Student: I agree with the previous poster. Get out and take as many of your fellow students with you as you can. Find a place to get back in balance with yourself again, a place in the real world, give yourself some time to think it all out (what was good, what was bad and what was ugly about what happened to you -- at some distance)... Then decide what was "shite" and what was truth about this site. Don't waste your energies, your time and your "fire"! Don't allow them to ruin you for the good work you could be doing in the world -- find some other way to help! There are other programs out there... why does it have to be this one you're stuck in ?-- If they're not living up to their side of the bargain, not giving you what they promised you they would, yet demanding that you give, give, give to their agenda, with nothing in return... why on earth would you give them another minute? ... Do you think it's going to get better? Hasn't happened yet... Hey, they've already got your money, chalk that up to a learning experience -- scam artists always say, "never give a sucker an even break." They don't care about the fact that you paid that in good faith...all they care about is that it's in their bank accounts ready to invest in some other scam... Get out!

 

Hi Danish Student!

Get out and take as many of your friends with you as you can! Good luck!

Here there student in Denmark.

*The money situation shouldn't be to difficult to find out. Ask the Principal to hold a presentation about it. *About the Chaos. I suggest you sit down and meet to find out how it could be improved and how your school could be better organized. *About not learning anything from your teacher. Try to define what it is the teacher should teach you and meet with him/her and the staff about that.

Many have been in the same situation as you. Some have chosen to quite, other have chosen to work together to make it into someting good.

I suggest that last and that you do not mix up the situation at your school with some people "crying" Brainwash, cult and cheating with money!

Im currently a student in one of the schools in Denmark. You have too much shite on your page but also too much truth. Im concidering jumping of because: The costs are extremly high and you can not get information about where the money goes...Money talks and is moore important to the drh than anything else...There is no organisation of the school, its a chaos...We clean, cook and clean and I learn nothing from my teachers and so on and so on...I really want to Africa and to help but the fire I had in me gets no fuel here only water...And about 80 % of the students agree on this. Maybe Ill write moore when I have quit...Soo many student and no fire left.

Hi Chris!

"...I have to agree that yes 20-30 stories does not make a majority..."

- I have personally never seen any figures relating to how many Tvind students are dissatisfied with their stays at the schools. In my own experience I know only 3 people that have been students at the schools, all of them hated it.

"...the US government has suported far more lethal and evil people than Tvind, even our dear Thai government financially supported the Khmer Rouge, right wing killers in the 70's and other less high profile groups..."

- But that doesn't make supporting mass murdering dictatorships right, does it?

"Denmark is (...) still a hard core Capitalist country."

- This one almost caused me to laugh out loud hysterically!;) Anyway, trust me on this: Denmark is anything BUT a hard core capitalist country! We have the highest taxes in the world, a completely unionized labour force and as you mention, a very comprehensive social welfare system.

yours, *<:-)

 

TVIND THREATENS COURT WITNESS (from jp) Tvind has launched a counterattack in the case against the so-called humanitarian trust. One crown witness, Hans la Cour is being threatened with legal proceedings, former members of the teachers group are pressured into signing declarations of support and critical statements made by Tommy Christensen have been brought before the National Council of Lawyers. more details in Danish at: http://www.jp.dk/dbp/internetavisen/indland/artikel&art_id=3533608

Hi Chris, This is a cheap shot but what the hell. :) So the foreign policy of US government is now the standard by which we should judge Tvind? I think you have finally found a topic that everyone can disagree with.....Cheers....Lars

Hi *<:-D

While "haha" does seem to be a bit derailed I have to agree that yes 20-30 stories does not make a majority. It makes a majority here as this site has a 100% bias towards only showing anything and everything it can show to be against Tvind regardless of whether such items are true or totally without proof.

"Tvind doesn't allow people to get married and have kids"...erm, sorry I'll debunk that now, the headteacher of DIE Tvind Bore and his wife Birgide had a baby girl while I was working there, I think their daughters name was Lisa...though I profess I can't remember for sure

The Danish government has always been against Tvind, has never liked the education system they devised nor their support for organizations such as SWAPO, ANC and so forth, nor it's general leanings towards communism. To have such a strong organization in ones back garden does tend to provoke a government to act. Seeing it from the governments point of view "Communist organization educating the Danish youth"...hmmmmm, as social welfare organized as Denmark is, it's still a hard core Capitilist country.

Interesting that you list governments that Tvind is said to have supported, the US government has suported far more lethal and evil people than Tvind, even our dear Thai government financially supported the Khmer Rouge, right wing killers in the 70's and other less high profile groups.

cheers

Chris

Oh, God, *<:), PLEASE don't wish all those soon-to-be deported TG bigwigs on all us innocents overseas! WE DON'T WANT THEM HERE! I sympathise,though, it's sort of like the issue of toxic waste...what to do with it.

Peace, love and rock&roll...and FREEEEDOMMMMM! Yesss.

Hippiechick

oops sorry, Pia Kjaergaard got twenty-some SEATS in parliament, not twenty-some % of the popular vote, (thank god!), I think she got something like 12% of the vote. *<:-)

hey haha

I am quite flattered that an actual real live Tvindie took time out of his busy schedule to respond to my post! Just have a couple of questions for you:

"...Tvind equips all their schools with WORKING computers..." Since when do home built 386'ers qualify as working computers?! ;)

"sounds a little bit like afghanistan where the "evidence" of the attack is was Bin Laden wouldn`t last long in a courtoom.. instead america declares war. " Well what do you know? A Tvindie who is pro-Taleban? Not that I'm surprised really... It is a quite natural progression from supporting Robert Mugabe, the Khmer Rouge and throwing a party for the late great North Korean dictator, Kim. Maybe you should actually go live with the some of these people for a while, I understand that they too are great champions of your versions of "democracy and freedom"

Oh yeah, you also seemed to mention that (I) am so brainwashed, maan That coming from a man who obviously believes that the racist Danish government is in a grand conspiracy with the entire Scandinavian media, with a bit of help from the French national assembly declaring Tvind a cult, all aimed at making little Amdi cry.

By the way, until Pia Kjaersgaard got 20-some percent of the votes a couple of weeks ago we actually in the very elite when it comes to being humainst. Just ask the UN, that shouldnt be tough, all your websites link to them anyway, implying that they somehow support your operations, right?

In a few years time, when good ole Jens, the sheriff of Holstebro or someone else shuts you guys down for good, you will stand there all alone, with all the important TG members in jail or hiding out overseas, watching all your ideals come crashing down around you and wonder where your youth and your life went. Do yourself a favour, get out now before its too late!

Yours, *<:-)

PS: Calling yourself hippies is truly an insult to hippies everywhere!!

beware of Aids! use a condom!

Fuck you danmark rulez

yes, very nice answer!!!straight out!

 

Sure, long live Pia kaersgaard, she's so humanistic... haha, Denmark democratic, give me a break man.

 

"Unfortunately, judging from the stories of a lot of people out there, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule."

haha, so ridicolous, how many stories are there here? 20-30, out of 50 000 students that has passed through the tvind schools... that`s really the majority that has had a bad experience

Give me evidence about the workers being treated like slaves, and I don`t mean Extrabladet (the really objective professional newspaper haha)

I`m not allowed to marry anyone I want, damn man, where are you from, not from this world I guess

can you please provide me with that record, not the rumorbased "Tvind is under investigation" record, but all cases where we actually has been convicted.

"somehow end up being used on luxury apartments in Miami Beach, luxury Mercedes SUVs and the like."

Give me the evidence, that those money are from founds meant for problematic kids or development aid. You know the teachers group has a lot of money, and what we do with OUR money (not humanas, not adpp, not planet aid, not the small schools but OUR money) has nothing to do with you

Why do I think that the government passed a law against us.

Well, some old hippies in the middle of nowhere in western jyttland aint no threat, when those hippies build the worlds biggest windmill and seriously threatens the plans of nuclear power, we started being a threat. When we remind the government of their own faults and failures with taking care of problematic kids, they see it as offensive, When Tvind equips all their schools with WORKING computers for a very small amount of money and the socialist danish government spends 100 million and fails, some people gets pissed of..

The law that was passed was breaking the ground law in Denmark, and the minister of education when asked said "The reason I declare this law is that I know I can`t win in a courtoom"

sounds a little bit like afghanistan where the "evidence" of the attack is was Bin Laden wouldn`t last long in a courtoom.. instead america declares war.

LONG LIVE DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM!!

 

haha

 

you are so brainwashed man

 

Chris,

I am glad that your Tvind experience was so positive. Unfortunately, judging from the stories of a lot of people out there, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

Be that as it may, even if every single Tvind student did have a great time at the schools, even if the Latin American Tvind plantation workers did not work under slave-like conditions, even if Tvind teachers were free to marry and have children with anyone they choose, even that does not change the fact that Tvind has a very faulty record when it comes to managing public money entrusted to it. And as a Danish taxpayer, that causes me concern.

Through a complex network of trusts, holding companies, and offshore bank accounts, public education and charity funds that are supposed to be used respectively for educating "problem kids" and helping the people of the third world somehow end up being used on luxury apartments in Miami Beach, luxury Mercedes SUVs and the like.

Why do you think that the then socialist-dominated Danish PARLIAMENT actually passed a law a few years ago whose sole purpose was to try and eliminate Tvind? They just didn't have anything better to do that day? Why would a country, regarded as one of the most humanist and democratic in the world suddenly attempt to BAN a so-called legitimate charity organisation like Tvind? Could there perhaps be a reason for this?

cheers, *<:-D

Hi Nameless Smiley " *<:-D "

>obviously intelligent man

This has not yet been proven but thanks anyway :)

Anyway........

I don't know Amdi, have never met him and to the best of my knowledge have not said anything for or against him. My views are based only upon experiences I have had and comparisons of the similar schools. And as I have said before, Tvind is not perfect, but who is and many things could be better...BUT with all things considered, Tvind still do excellent work in Africa, give great "experience based" education and gave me an excellent 4 years of work, adventure and travel.

Cheers

Chris

Chris,

How can an obviously intelligent man like yourself find it in his heart to defend the likes of Mogens Amdi Petersen and his cronies? You are a bigger man than I.

*<:-D

Taking action when it's needed

By Anders Svensson.

As a teacher - a leader - a social worker - it is important to be welcoming and always ready. Just think of this situation: 20 kids in a class room and just one teacher. It is the teachers task to make sure that each student get the help needed. And it is the teachers task to notice the kids so they are never bored. The ones who are about to give up must be encouraged, and the ones who look unhappy comforted. It is your job to reach each single student. It really is. Regardless whether you like them or not. It is your task  to treat the most unlikeable kid with respect. You have to teach yourself how - or get someone more experienced to help you if you find it difficult. It is also the teachers task to be the entrepreneur, who is not afraid of starting something new, even though she is not sure how it will all end. What for? Is that in your job description as a teacher? Isn't teaching about delivering the curriculum? I have known a couple of teachers who worked pretty hard the first couple of years, went through the same curriculum over and over again - and they would know it by heart. After a couple of years they knew the sentences the students would perhaps rephrase slightly the next twenty years - nothing would ever be unknown. Everything would be as it always used to be. This kind of teacher is not an entrepreneur. Guess what! The world changes all the time and it is the teachers task to teach his students to be part of these changes. Stress fills the everyday life of many people and this stress is often caused by the fear of changes because teachers - and people in general - are not trained to change. It is important that the teacher trains his students to face unforeseen situations and teach them to solve the problems they are facing. Just 20 years ago everything was much more simple. The world of work was not very complicated The handicraft mans job was simple - when the fundamental tools were known and he could handle them easily. The baker became a good baker, the carpenter could saw and hammer .... this has changed. Today the carpenter has to figure it all out as well, he has to read the architects drawings and the manual. Tasks, that are not very simple. All of us who have tried to assemble 27 pieces of wood and 35 screws into an IKEA shelf know what I am talking about. These tasks are getting more and more complicated and the teacher has to make his students capable of solving increasinlgy complex problems. In theory we can agree on these questions. But in practice things are often different. We are not educated to use - or equipped with - the tools that are needed to solve the problems. That is why we avoid situations where problems are likely to occur. That is why we often try to avoid the conflicts instead of meeting them head-on - experiencing them and using them in order to jump to a new and better level. At DNS we train our teacher students to detect, analyse and solve conflict situations. We teach them to be mobile and full of ideas and welcoming. We see the education to be teacher as an education to give other people a hand. You have to be a humanist as a teacher, You need to be able to see strengths and potentials instead of weaknesses and bad manners. In the middle of a world where people are getting more and more fixed on reaching their own individual goals, we challenge the DNS students to look up from their bellybuttons and ask them to share their personal surplus with others that are in badly need it. And now let me let you in on a secret: By contributing with you skills for the benefir of others, by running that extra mile for someone, by actaully caring - your life becomes richer, fuller and more fun. And you will have many friends from all sorts of backgrounds. So - how do we actually put these ideas into practice at DNS? We have expanded DNS to include other programmes than the teacher education, training schools if you like. We call the different departments our heart chambers. The teacher training course is one heart chamber PTG - which stands for Practical Theoretical Basic Education in Danish is another. It is a programme for students aged 18+ who would like to take a HF exam which is Danish exam equivalent to German Abitur or UK A'levels. There is also the Vitality Centre which is a shorter term holiday and weekend centre where we make tailor made programmes for youngsters with speocal needs or other people who need special care "DNS - Day and Night Service" is another heartchamber activity where we solve emergency situaions of various kinds - a bit like a temping service. As a student at DNS you have ample opportunity to work in one of the other heart chambers, and in that way gain a lot of practical experience with a multitude og tasks that all have to do with teaching and social work. There is a tight cooperation between the regular teachers at PTG and the Vitality Centre and the DNS students. Sometimes the participation of the DNS students is planned far in advance, sometimes there are issues that need to be solved straight away, and the DNS students will step in and help where needed. For instance: The Vitality Center is a heart chamber who caters mostly for troubled youngsters who need to get away for a weekend or a holiday period because of various reasons - maybe they are at special school which closes during holidays, maybe they are "between placements" - maybe going from one foster family to.... something else that the local authorities have to figure out. Another example: Some of the youngsters at PTG have social problems.  Anybody who has been together with troubled kids knows that difficult situations can happen suddenly. Problems need to be solved immediately. Then some of the DNS students can come and help out - maybe go for a walk with someone, or help out with homework or whatever the problem is. More or less in a "big sister"  (or brother) role. So what is in it for the DNS student? Well, it is a very good training situation for the coming teacher to be able to handle unexpected situations, with the supervision and support from experienced teachers of course. It keeps you on your toes, it trains you to be flexible, creative in finding new solutions and maybe most importantly - to be part of a big "family" where you of course lend a helping hand when it is needed. Also - this close cooperation between the DNS students - the teachers to be - and a whole bunch of other people with various needs, and experienced teachers who always have the situation in hand - is a very good mix. Everyone wins. Everyone gets to know people they would normally not mix with. The social environment is great at DNS as a direct result of the cooperation between the heart chambers.

To the previous poster, here's an extract from the article if you even bothered reading, and I'd say that ADPP is as legitimate as it can be.

"A module on HIV/AIDS has been developed by ADPP for use in training teachers in 6 colleges in the country. Already 600 teachers have been trained, and are now using their knowledge and skills to reach people through their community work, and through clubs."

But I guess that's just bad, I mean, 600 teachers teaching >50 kids in a class about HIV/AIDS prevention is sooooooo bad, not to mention the clubs and voluntary work being done by those teachers and how many people they reach?

maybe Tvind tries to increase the % of HIV/AIDS cases? is it a conspiracy thought out by Amdi, is it Tvinds plan to give HIV/AIDS to the entire southern africa and take over everything, Is Tvind infecting their teachers with HIV/AIDS??

Get real man

that was HIV/AIDS... and "serving" in that last post.

I would like to thank the poster who so thoughtfully left us the information about the HIV?aids epidemic in Mozambique. It is a reminder to those of us who might be interestsed in teaching in the third world that those under our care would benefit from our legitimate teacher training garnered at legitimate educational institutions, and then finding placement with legitimate service organizations in order to be most effective with the populations we are servind.

I am very happy that Tvind goes out of Denmark. It is not at all an interesting country apart Ekstra Bladet and the Erotica Museum. I think that with this government of big fat gorillas no way for tvind to be there; they all will be in jail with that socialist ideas try to brainwash all that lovely kids all over denmark!

http://www.unicef.org/mozambique/educ_hiv.htm

Hi D,

Thanks for the link, but, you are shallow in your research, there are already at least 5 DRH schools outside Denmark and a new DNS is being developed already. Not exactly a new thing.

Hi Lars,

What is interesting though is that their PR and press coveragre in Africa on the whole is very good and very positive, looking over many of the African national papers web sites you can find positive articles and reports going back many years and covering right up to present day, could it be that the LG and volunteers are doing some good in Africa....now that'd make for worthless press in Europe wouldn't it...... I mean how can Ekstra Bladet sell papers that say "Tvind helps People", all time low sales.

Cheers

Chris

 

Hey Chris,

Unfortunatley the DRH is probably not going to exist at that time - Tvind is leaving Denmark, you see! *<:-D

http://www.eb.dk/VisArtikel.iasp?PageID=146162 (article in Danish)

News from Denmark: TG members that are being investigated by the authorities are leaving the country trying to avoid punishment for their acts. How heroic

Hi Chris, Yes, their PR is ridiculous but given the fact that the TG is full of intelligent hard-working people I have trouble believing that it is simply a bad decision. Actually it probably works as well as anything can in the face of all the problems. The last thing they want is any kind of light shining in on the organization.

I already have the URL for the CCTG guestbook but since they have removed the link from their homepage it is a guestbook that no one thinking about CCTG will ever visit or see. Too much free speech I guess.

Lars

Hi Lars,

People always quit from things, that's a fact of life, going to Africa is not an easy decision and the closer a person gets to going the more stress a person can feel if they are not 100% committed to that idea. Even going to Asia, once you start to build the bus interior and people realize that "gee I don't have my own private room" they will quit, they is no "I" on a bus or in Africa, it is all about the group.

Bak to the point though, so you'd have liked seen of discussed upfront before fund raising how the money raised was to be spent, rathe than post funding finding out that it was split over a range of items that were not all related to the project? I think that's where things vary from school to school and project to project, in DRH Hornsjo it was transparent on my course, in DRH Tvind becuase we were going to Asia it was even more so.

On a different tact, CCTG Guest Book :

http://two.guestbook.de/gb.cgi?gid=373406&prot=nqgdlw&

should get you in.

Yes I agree, as I said on the CCTG board where the LG falls flat on its face is PR. They could do them selves a lot more good if they handled the press and questions in a better way. The standoff, no comment, no answer, system they choose to use just doesn't earn them any brownie points.

Sadly posts like the two proceeding this one from supposed pupils ar Tvind don't help a great deal, that said the same one liners come from both sides of the fence.

At the end of the day, I don't agree with how everything is done at Tvind, but I can say that about any job I have had and any company/person I have worked with, BUT I had a great time, learnt a lot, saw a lot and would do it again if present circumstances allowed.....Having a wife, daughter, two dogs and a company to run doesn't allow :O). Though I hope to send my daughter to join a DRH for a year when she is old enough.

Cheers

Chris

Hei to you how havd been in tvind I am curently a "pupil" here. and my guess is that you where here during the get involved conferens, when there was a info meeting. let me just say to you. If you are not willing to take a hole lot of crap from A. lauzen, to go to africka. dont come here. besause it is the strong ones that leave and the weak willed how stays.

nn seems to know amdi, has even been in miami to meet him in the penthouse, taking a walk with the dogs or maybe having some discussions while playing some golf ? very very very sorry, but your statement shows, you do not know anything about tvind, humana, amdi, ... so why do you start talking such silly shit, go discuss football results, the elections, what so ever, ...

FYI, looks like the link on CCTG's homepage to their guestbook has been de-linked.

http://www.cctg.org/

Too much free speech out of the control of the TG, I guess.

Lars

Hi Chris, Sorry for losing you. No, actually my gripe isn't how the money is spent but the process through which the decision to spend it was made. Like I said we probably would have been willing to give the money to IICD (we were still really into the TG) but they never asked and told us that ALL the money raised was going to the project. Sounds like you had a better system in place for your group but people still quit.

I guess this sums up a lot of critique of the TG. There is a whole line about group decision making and working together but in the end, the TG members act on their own despite what has otherwise been said.

Cheers....Lars

 

 

In the

Hi Lars,

I'm a bit lost, so in essence your main beef is over the way the money raised was spent, i.e. it could have been better used, budgeted and controlled and you think that you as the team should have been control over the budget? If so I agree, our Asia team did just that and it does put a different perspective on fund raising when you know that you need X Krona to buy enough petrol to get to India and X Krona for food, X for Visas and so on. I think also it would make people have a more positive outlook on fund raising if they new exactly where what they raised went in their team, even if it was on rent, bills and so forth, at least you'd know.

To be honest it never bothered me, I never gave it much thought, I know members on both teams I worked had issues with it and it cuased some members to quit.

That said, I hate selling post cards, hate it more than anything else in the world, thankfully on my second team in Sweden I worked at a chicken farm cleaning the pens...boy I stank..but it was better than postcards :O)

Cheers

Chris

The TG and all the activities - especially HUMANA would be very good - IF Amdi had the moral to resign - or TG members had the courage to ask him and his body guards to go. He is a very, very sick, afraid and small minded man.nn.

MD,

Why do you assume that I am not using my "time and effort to do some good"? For all you know I could be Desmond Tutu... And if you truly believe that TvindAlert contributors don't have lives outside this forum (unlike Tvindies that have no personal lives), you are sadly mistaken.

You try and call humana a "cult" because there a group of people working together to do what they believe in. So if you call humana a "cult" then what is tvind alert? Would you call yourselfs a cult because you work for what you so called "believe in" you use your time and effort to write all theses things why dont you use this time and effort to do some good. MD

Hi Chris and Jimmy, Actually I was at IICD not CCTG or the Danish schools. I should also probably restate since I think that my "commitment" sentence is not conveying what I was trying to get at. Mea culpa...just the result of typing something off very quickly late at night.

I'm not actually critiquing IICD for lack of support in the field. We were working with another NGO at the time who was very well organized and provided the logistical support that we needed. (Just to prove my "toughness quotient" - always necessary to avoid being casted as lazy - I too lived bare to the bone in the field, where spending ten cents on a newspaper was something we split between three people and a coke was a once a month luxury)

My critique is less about support away from the US and more about the fund-raising/training period. The energy of the TG members was clearly on fund-raising and left little time for the so-called "training" offered and left us fairly unprepared.

In terms of specific funny dealings with money, (1) we were led to believe that the money we were raising was for our project and only later found out that it was going to IICD's costs. Not necessarily a bad thing because someone has to pay for electricity but my impression was that our fund was raided because of an IICD budget shortfall. Hell, we might of even volunteered the money but we were never asked. (2) Upon return to the US, the pot of money that we had been budgeted for traveling and doing presentations was cut in half making it very difficult to do. Maybe I won't get CCTG to give a day by day breakdown of expenses but I learned to distrust the statements of TG organizations around money.

I actually don't buy the idea that the TG is paranoid simply because everyone is out to get them. I extended them a lot of trust but the misused it. As you sow, so shall you reap.

Lars

 

THERE IS NOTHING MORE PATHETIC THAN A GROWN MAN OR WOMAN WHO IS SO INSECURE THAT HE OR SHE HAS TO JOIN A NEO-MAOIST CULT LIKE TVIND!

THERE IS NOTHING MORE PATHETIC THAN A GROWN MAN OR WOMAN WHO IS SO INSECURE THEY HE OR SHE HAS TO JOIN A NEO-MAOIST CULT LIKE TVIND!

THERE IS NOTHING MORE PATHETIC THAN A GROWN MAN OR WOMAN WHO IS SO INSECURE THEY HE OR SHE TO JOIN A NEO-MAOIST CULT LIKE TVIND!

Lars

"It is just when we had to deal with the TG that things broke down. We were committed but the lack of any support and a lot of funny dealings with money was the problem. In a very real sense, any commitment for our group dropped off once we out of the US and away from fund-raising. "

How much commitment does that show? as soon as you were "on your own" doing what you trained for all commitment dropped?

Funny dealings with money, please specify

When you had to deal with TG things broke down, yeah, sure. "TG made us loose the commitment" or something??

Jimmy

Hi Lars,

So you went to CCTG then, not the danish schools? I'll agree that while I enjoyed my time working at Tvind and on various projects they can be a bit "protective" of the information, paranoid maybe.... then again you're not paranoid if everyone really is out to get you are you, which for Tvind, would seem to be the case.

"any commitment for our group dropped off once we out of the US and away from fund-raising. " Where did your team go and who was your LG teacher on the team. When I went to Zambia, our LG teacher Jostein was a pillar of strength and organization. At the same time, yes we were pretty much, on our own resources 95% of the time, but so what, that was what we had trained for, we didn't go to Zambia to be put in a nice hotel and baby sat for 3 months. We lived out in the bush doing our work, showered when water was available and ate chicken 3 times a day 5 to 6 times a week. Cola when available was a luxury...and usually served at30 degrees C.

I know that you'd like CCTG to give you a dollar by dollar break down of where the money goes from fund raising and school fees etc. But you'll never get it, just like you'd never get it from any private institute.

cheers

Chris

← Previous

Page 362 of 2211

Next →