kilometer zero running eye blog

Some of us heard the first part of this story long years ago, amid the soggy carpets and musky air of a KMZ Venue at the Chateaudun squat. The faded drunkenness and half-remembered friendships of those nights seem to fold perfectly into Jonny Diamond’s work. Read him here. Visit him here.

Social TV is a non-partisan Israeli social change initiative that aims to empower the peace and social change movement in Israel. Founded in 2006, Social TV has already produced over 250 short video programs for its website and seeks to become a model of socially responsible communication throughout Israel and the Middle East.

Here is the entry page to their website: http://www.tv.social.org.il/

This is a video report about IDF combat soldiers who refuse to serve in Gaza.

This is a short report documenting over 10,000 Israelis in Tel-Aviv protesting against the attacks in Gaza.

Working with Dave Eggers and the Valentino Deng Association, (http://www.valentinoachakdeng.org/), Craig Walzer travelled across North Africa, Europe, North America interviewing people who had fled Sudan during the brutal civil war. The result is the mesmerizing Out of Exile, an oral history as poignant as it is important. And, if you’re at all interested in the art of narrative non-fiction, get this book along with Egger’s What is the What and have a nice long think about the role of truth in story telling.

To learn more about the book, visit it’s official site page.

“They are amazing tales, full of chance and happenstance that occur in a shadow world where Cairo operates as a kind of hub, boomeranging people away from Sudan, or, more often, keeping them trapped in stateless limbo.” — San Francisco Chronicle

Although it might sound bombastic, Robert Badinter could well be the greatest living French man and is certainly an international human rights icon for his tireless crusade against the death penalty.

A lawyer, politician, and statesman, Badinter’s is best know for abolishing the death penalty in France. He became a devoted abolitionist after one of his clients was unjustly guillotined in 1972. Over the next decade, Badinter fought the death penalty both in the courts – he saved six men from the guillotine – and in the political arena. After the election of François Mitterrand in 1981, he was named Minister of Justice and wrote the legislation that abolished the death penalty. He was later appointed president of France’s Constitutional Council and is currently a member of the French Senate. Internationally, he has advised on the constitutions of evolving democracies in Eastern Europe, participated in major trials such as that as former Pakistani president Ali Bhutto, and was a founder of the World Congress Against the Death Penalty.

Kilometer Zero is pleased to note the English release of Badinter’s masterwork, Abolition. The book recounts his legal and political battle to end the death penalty in France, and serves as a guidebook on the various legal and political strategies that can be used in the quest for abolition. The book won the prix Femina – essai when it was released in France in 2000 and has since been translated into several languages. The American edition is being published by Northeastern University Press with a preface by Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch. The translation was done by KMZ alumnus Jeremy Mercer.

Badinter and Mercer visited New York City and Washington D.C. in September 2008 to mark the release of the book. You can listen to Badinter’s conversation with Neal Katyal about the death penalty, hosted by the New York Public Library, here.