Mois : avril 2007

Index April 2007

Robert Springborg – England

Linked with Geneva Centre for the DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF ARMED FORCES DCAF, with 4th General Conference of the ECPR, and with Political Islam and Europe.

Robert Springborg holds the MBI Al Jaber Chair in Middle East Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and is Director of the London Middle East Institute.

He says: ”We stop the Mohamed Atta’s of the future in the same way that it seems to me to deal with the rest of Egypt and the third world. We help them to develop. That one needs to see opportunities in this society, opportunities for economic development, for the practice of one’s profession, for the expression of one’s beliefs and that can only come about with higher rates of economic growth and as presently constructed, this economy is incapable of taking advantage of opportunities provided by globalisation and is indeed threatened by that globalisation so there needs to be some reconfiguration of the relationship between the first world and the third world and Egypt to enable that development to occur more successfully because if there is not, then there will be protests of various sorts whether of the Islamist variety or others and they will continue odd infinitum so the answer in my mind is one word, it’s development ». (full text).

Look at: Oil and Democracy in Iraq, edited by Robert Springborg, Publication Date 23 Jan 2007: This is the first major study of the alternatives confronting Iraq as it seeks to rebuild its vital oil industry while simultaneously constructing a new political system. A key challenge facing the country is to allocate the revenues oil generates in a way that avoids economic and social instability. Reviewing the present status of the industry, the authors – including Clement Henry, Massoud Karshenas, Roger Owen, Mona Said and John Sfakianakis – use comparative analysis to suggest how it might best be rebuilt. This book is an important and timely assessment of Iraq’s oil industry. (full text).

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Robert Springborg – UK AU USA Egypt etc.

He says also: « My impression of Iraq [when I worked there] is that it had been the most effective developer of human resources of any Arab country other than Lebanon. It had built fine institutions in terms of health, education and other human resources. The Iraqi people were talented and great to work with, which makes the present situation all the more tragic. By the early 1980s, before I left, I visited the front with Iran during the Iran-Iraq conflict. The Iraqis had built substantial recreation centres underneath the bunkers with fine fittings and fixtures, with the help of many immigrant workers, including Koreans. It was a pretty opulent situation with Iraqi soldiers commuting to and from Baghdad, almost as weekend soldiers, probably a very different situation than their Iranian counterparts. The Iraqi army was almost a carbon copy of the Red Army under Stalin, with political commissars who were present calling the shots over military commanders ». (full text).

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Mirta Susana Clara – Argentina

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « The photos of the prisoners humiliated by the Americans in Iraq remind me of my husband tortured in 1976, when the Argentinean military tied him up and took him on parade » … and: « With our companions in Switzerland and Spain, we are working to build ‘The place for ex-political prisoners’. It will be a place to recover the historical memory of what has happened ».

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Mirta Susana Clara – Argentina

She works for the Municipal Government of Buenos Aires, and for the Lanas National University.

After six years in prison, Mirta Clara, her daughter and son, and the rest of society, slowly, began to become familiar with each other again. Her husband had been killed by the Argentinean military regime (1976-1983). Through her professional specialty, psychology, she tries to construct inclusive policies to help the people excluded by society. Some of them have been affected directly or indirectly by genocide, others have been excluded by unemployment and its consequences, the greatest of which is poverty.

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Kurt Vonnegut – USA (1922 – 2007)

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973), (see books, texts, bio, references, footnotes etc., on wikipedia).

The remaining picture on his official website.

But see also ‘thE vOnnEgUt wEb‘.
He says: “Don’t use semi-colons. They stand for nothing … they only show you’ve been to college.” He follows this by commenting “All American literature is about how bad it is to be American”. A list ensues, including the Scarlet Letter, Death of a Salesman and Moby Dick. (full text).

And also: “All I wanted to do was support my family,” Vonnegut wrote in 1999. “I didn’t think I would amount to a hill of beans”. (full text).

On wikipedia you’ll get the links to most of the (american) obituary writings, (scroll down).

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Kurt Vonnegut – USA (1922 – 2007)

Watch theis Google-Video: 37.59 min. the infinite mind;

ok, just go to Google-Video, put his name in the search tool, and you find pages of more Google-videos from or about Kurt Vonnegut.

And here some YouTube-Videos:

Kommaly Chanthavong – Laos

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « We strengthen the position of women by giving them a dependable income and thus improving the chances of their children » … « I learned to weave from my mother when I was six years old, and I loved it » … « I met many desperately poor families displaced from rural areas without any marketable skills, so I started to teach the women how to weave silk » … « Our greatest challenge is to compete against cheaper, low-quality » … imports ».

Read: the cycle of silk production.

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Kommaly Chanthavong – Laos

She works for the Phontong cooperative for the production of silk, with the Lao Sericulture Company named Mulberries.

Kommaly Chantavong (born 1950) is a farmer’s daughter from the mountains of eastern Laos. When her village was bombed by the Americans in 1961, she fled to Vientiane. In 1976, she founded a cooperative for the production of silk, which she still heads. The cooperative teaches mostly women traditional skills in raising silkworms, making natural dyes and weaving traditional patterns. The successful marketing of the products provides a fair and steady income to several hundred families that used to be very poor.

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Michael Parenti – USA

Linked with Third World Traveler, with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, with Lori Wallach – USA, with How the Free Market Killed New Orleans, with Economy and Human Rights – one, with The Peninsula Peace and Justice Center PPJC, and with The Human Condition Series.

He is an internationally known award-winning author and lecturer. He is one of the nation’s leading progressive political analysts. His highly informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad. (more on his Homepage).

He says: « The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology ». (Third world traveler).

Listen to his Google-videos:

Read: Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty In The World, By Michael Parenti, 24 April, 2007, Countercurrents.org.

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Michael Parenti – USA

He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. Some of his writings have been translated into Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Listen to some of his many YouTube-videos:

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Lijuan XIANG – China

She is Laureate for the Prize for Women’s Creativity in Rural Life.

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Lijuan XIANG – China

She works for a kindergarten she created for rural children.

There are not many places where rural children have access to kindergartens, especially in Third World countries.

After successfully working in the city kindergarten of Dongyue Township, Xiang Lijuan (30) of Dong Yue Xiang Ping Qiao village (Sichuan Province) decided to return home to open a kindergarten for rural children.

Obstacles were immense. She had the care of an elderly mother and a two year old child. With no classrooms, no teachers, no equipment and no money, all she had was a dream and an unbending, unrenting will. First, she had to negotiate with local schools and government. Then she approached banks and large city kindergartens for support. After endless efforts, she secured a 60’000 yuan loan (US$ 7’500), which enabled her to open her Sunflower Kindergarten in 2002 with adequate equipment and professional teachers.

Under her expert leadership, each teacher became a loving mother to the children. After only three years, the success was so striking, she obtained a much more important loan, enabling her to expand to a larger, more professsional set-up in a better environment, allowing her to better incarnate her dream that rural children, too, have a right to the best.

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David Truskoff – USA

He says about himself:  » can be identified by bumps on head from ighting windmills Civil rights activist…anti-war activist…anti poverty activist and anti publisher rejection activist », (on AuthorsDen.com).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR, David Truskoff: At the end of World War II, David Truskoff returned to his hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey after being discharged from the US Navy with honor, commendations and dreams of a peaceful world. The naiveté was short lived. In 1948 he believed in and worked for Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate. (users.erols.com).

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David Truskoff – USA

Read: Trickledown Economics Perpetuates War, By David Truskoff, 23 April, 2007.

Read also: The Confused American Left Ask, Am I A Racist? By David Truskoff, 20 April, 2007.

And finally read: What Do The Young Jews Know? By David Truskoff, 03 April, 2007.

And also read: Perhaps We can still avoid the Third Civil War, By David Truskoff, 10 March, 2007.

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Dandi Lou Hélène Amanan – Cote d'Ivoire

Linked with West African Network for Peacebuilding WANEP.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « The exclusion of women in early crisis talks was a huge mistake. It is now up to the women of Ivory Coast to correct that mistake ».

Read: Her texts on UNjobs. (full text).

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Dandi Lou Hélène Amanan – Cote d’Ivoire

She works for the Women in Peacebuilding Network WIPNET, (exists also in french), and for Vision et action des femmes africaines contre les guerres VAFAG.

Hélène Amanan served as a secretary of the permanent mission of the Ivory Coast for the United Nations in New York, was an international official (1992-1999) in charge of coordination of social affairs and protection of refugees for the High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ivory Coast and in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was coordinator of the program Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET) of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding.

Since 2004, Madame Dandi has been the French regional adviser (West Africa) of the Network of African Women for Peace. The goal of Madame Dandi Lou’s NGO is to involve African women in building peace, preventing or managing conflict and giving urgent help to vulnerable people (women, children, refugees, handicapped, elderly people). As it’s leader, she worked on a national and international plan to deliver the message to women affected by the wars.

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Ute Bock – Austria

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « It is not wise to establish a group of underprivileged people. Even if these people can, or are forced to, move back to their homeland, it is better that they learn something here ». And: « I used to be able to buy subway tickets for people. Nowadays I have to think about being able to afford lunch », is how she describes her situation. (1000PeaceWomen).

Ute Bock erhält 15’200 Euro, 28. Dezember 2006. Oft wurden wir in den letzten Wochen gefragt, wieviel Geld wir nun spenden können. Jetzt sind die Abrechnungen endlich abgeschlossen und wir können uns über einen gewaltigen Betrag von 15.200 Euro für die Ute Bock und ihr Flüchtlingsprojekt freuen! (full text).

Read in german: Solidarität mit Frau Bock – Eine Aktion des WBDS.

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Ute Bock – Austria

Ute Bock worked professionally for many years as a social worker and educator/teacher, before she became director of the Zohmanngasse Home in Vienna in 1976.. In the early 1990s, she started to take care of teenage immigrants. She also took in underage refugees from countries at war, who came to Austria on their own looking for asylum. Ute Bock was the last hope for many teenage immigrants for whom nobody else cared. Her small project has grown into a community of 50 apartments where over 200 people find a home. She has also provided a legal address and legal aid for more than 1000 immigrants so that they can pursue their asylum procedures.

She was born in Linz, Austria in 1942.

In the early 1990s, Ute Bock started to take care of teenage immigrants, who were sent to her by the youth welfare office. At first, they were mostly children of immigrant workers. But soon enough she also took in underage immigrants from countries at war, who came to Austria on their own looking for asylum. Zohmanngasse and Ute Bock were the last hope for many teenage immigrants for whom nobody else cared.

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