Benghazi Was Not the Beginning of the End
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Chairman of TheCommunity.com’s Advisory Board José Ramos-Horta puts some perspective on events in the Middle East. I share the civilized world’s revulsion at the destruction being wreaked by anti-US
Long flight home
Dili-Singapore-Tokyo-Los Angeles. 37 1/2 hours straight in planes and airports. But I got a shower and five hours of sleep in Singapore, and overall a very comfortable flight on Singapore Air. Saw Mount Fuji at sunset coming into Tokyo. The experience of the Japanese in the airport made me want...
Last road trip in Timor-Leste
I expect this to be my last Sunday in East Timor. Brian Pinkowski, an anti-corruption expert on a project in Timor, goes out every Sunday snorkeling and diving, so this week I tagged along with him. I just splash around in the waves while he does serious stuff out by...
Just another day at the office
A few views of a typical (not that there’s anything typical about it at all, really) “work day” in Timor. Mostly working in the President’s office on a new web site and social media strategy. If you haven’t seen this one it’s more of an overview.
Photo gallery — Timor-Leste 2011
I have been pretty flat out since I arrived, working with his staff in the press office, and juggling work back in the US, a foot in both countries. I have an hour of downtime this afternoon. The US is sleeping. The President is arriving from China in an hour....
Breakfast with the President
I am staying in a guest room at the “Presidential compound” in Dili. I have known José Ramos-Horta for more than ten years. When I first met him in 2000 I don’t think he even had a post. But he was a Nobel Peace Prize winner and an international human...
The road back to Dili
I started coming to East Timor in 2000. It was still coming upright from the devastation of 1999. Timor was under UN administration then, with UN personnel EVERYWHERE, Armored Personnel Carriers from the peacekeeping forces on the road, traveling through military checkpoints. The country had been devastated in 1999, when...
1996 Jose Ramos-Horta, East Timor independence leader
In 1975 Indonesia took control of East Timor, known today as Timor Leste, a small island at the bottom of the Indonesian archipelago that had been a Portuguese colony for 400 years. In the period that followed, a twenty four year reign of terror, approximately one-third of the country’s citizens...
Paul Simon in East Timor Day 1
In 2005, musician Paul Simon joined thecommunity.com to help launch distribution of 4000 mosquito nets for East Timor’s malaria prevention program. According to the Global Fund for Malaria, TB and AIDS, mosquito-borne malaria is responsible for approximately 40% of the deaths in East Timor. The island also has the largest...
greatest hitsJose Ramos-Horta on Non-Violence
From 1974 to 1999, the small island of East Timor suffered one of the most brutal occupations in history. Under the Indonesian military, torture and disappearances were commonplace. Women were forcibly sterilized and taken as sex slaves. Entire villages were obliterated. One third of the Timorese population perished. Jose Ramos...