Mois : mai 2007

Index May 2007

Bettina Renz – England

Linked with Chatham House, with The Russian and Eurasian Security Network RES, with the Centre for Russian and East European Studies CREES, and with Russian Analytical Digest RAD.

Bettina Renz is Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College London/ Royal Air Force College, Cranwell. She completed her MSc by research in Russian Studies at the University of Edinburgh and her PhD at CREES, entitled, ‘Civil-Military Relations in Post-Soviet Russia: The Case of “Military Politicians”’. From 2002-2003 she worked as a Research Fellow on the ESRC project, ‘The Securitisation of Contemporary Russian Politics’, and in 2004-2005 as a Research Fellow on an ESRC consultancy, ‘UK Social Science and Central and Eastern Europe’. From 2005-2006 she held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests have included security sector reform, civil-military relations, media-military relations, « new » security issues, and the perception of security threats in Russia and in other post-Soviet states. Her current research focuses on the evolution of the Russian security sector with a particular emphasis on the topic of counterterrorism. She is Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies. (full text).

See: Lunchtime research seminars, summer 2007.

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Bettina Renz – England

She contributed to ‘the russian analytical digest’, to be download on RES/latest Publications/No. 17: « Siloviki » in Politics – Russian Military Reform/March 20, 2007. (in german: russland analysen).

Biography: Dr Bettina Renz graduated with an MA and MSc from the University of Edinburgh and received her PhD on the topic of civil-military relations in contemporary Russia from the University of Birmingham in 2005. Her research interests have included security sector reform, civil-military relations, media-military relations, « new » security issues, and the perception of security threats in Russia and other post-Soviet states.

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Parmaben Sava – India

Linked with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan KMVS.

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

She says: « I am getting old but I shall continue to provide my services to all who ask for them, as long as my health permits. I am happy and satisfied, but I am concerned about others around me ».

Without formal education and facing great odds, Parmaben has succeeded in her mission to bring healthcare to Kutchi women … HER earlobes hang almost touching her neck. Thick, white bangles cover her forearms; her richly woven kanjaria and audni speak of her desert-home. She has never had any formal education, and has only recently learned to write her name. (full text).

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Parmaben Sava – India

She works for Pachcham (or Kutch) Mahila Vikas Sangathan PMVS (KMVS).

Parmaben Sava is a traditional birth attendant, a midwife who became a leader within her community by educating women on reproductive health issues and rights. A Dalit by birth, she has concentrated her energies and efforts in the Kutch area around the Indian border with Pakistan, changing the lives of the women she has interacted with, and of the generations she has helped bring into the world.

Parmaben was born in Juna (in the Pachcham block), one of five children. Her childhood was very similar to those around her: no education in anything but housework, and marriage at the age of 16. In fact, it was only after she started working with the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan (KMVS) in the late 1980s that she learnt to sign her name.

By that time, though, Parmaben had given birth to four daughters (moving to Dhrobana after marrying), and realized the difficulties a pregnant woman faces, and the pathetic birthing situations.

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Hernando de Soto – Peru

Linked with The Institute for Liberty and Democracy ILD, with Peru police evict market traders, and with Hernando de Soto’s texts and videos.

Mr. de Soto is currently President of the ILD —headquartered in Lima, Peru— considered by The Economist as one of the two most important think tanks in the world. Time magazine chose him as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century in its special May 1999 issue « Leaders for the New Millennium », and included him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. (full text).

His main thesis: Need for private ownership (for everyone) ! The main tenet of de Soto’s books is that people in developing countries lack such an integrated formal property system, leading to only informal ownership of land and goods. He argues that the fruition of economic success of American and Japanese capitalism relied on a clear system of property rights which was created during the times of the ‘frontier’ in America and in Pre-WWI Feudal Japan. The lack of such an integrated system of property rights in today’s developing nations makes it impossible for the poor to leverage their now informal ownerships into capital (as collateral for credit), which de Soto claims would form the basis for entrepreneurship. Hence farmers in much of the developing world remain trapped in subsistence agriculture. As such, he argues that this informal ownership should be made formal, for example by giving squatters in shanty towns land titles to the land they now live on. (full text).

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Hernando de Soto – Peru

Peru’s most distinguished economist, Hernando De Soto, was among the key speakers at an event held by the Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA International) in New York City. (full text, May 16, 2007).

He says: « What my definition of capital is, for the purposes of this book, are all those values that are hidden in assets and that come forth when property is well defined. It’s much more interesting to talk to dead Americans than to live Americans, because dead Americans two centuries ago were facing the same problems we are now ». (full text).

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Elisabet Sahtouris – USA & Greece

Linked with The Bainbridge Graduate Institute BGI.

Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris is an evolution biologist, futurist, author, and consultant to organizations. Sahtouris is a member of the World Wisdom Council and a fellow of the World Business Academy. She is a citizen of the United States and of Greece, with a Canadian Ph.D. … (full text).

She says: « I think it was during my postdoctoral fellowship, when I was in Manhattan in New York City and saw so many social problems — people who were becoming homeless, being evicted, breathing foul air. I caused some unrest at the Museum of Natural History because they had paid a lot of money to do a very expensive pollution exhibit. This was around 1969. At the same time, the museum was belching black smoke all over northern Manhattan so women couldn’t hang their laundry out in the vicinity. I pointed out the contradiction between their pollution exhibit and what they were doing themselves. So there were many little lessons in seeing that science has such blinders on that it does not relate itself to the larger society ». (full text).

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Elisabet Sahtouris – USA & Greece

Listen to her videos:

In her unique approach, called Living Systems Design, Sahtouris applies the principles of biology and evolution to organizational development so that organizations may become more functional, healthy living systems, with increased resilience, stability, and cooperation.

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Samir Amin – Egypt

He is an Egyptian political author. He currently lives in Dakar, Senegal. He is born September 3, 1931 … After finishing his thesis, Amin went back to Cairo, where he was from 1957 to 1960 manager of Études de l’Organisme de Développement Économique. Subsequently Amin left Cairo, to become advisor in the Ministry of Planning in Bamako (Mali) from 1960 to 1963. In 1963 he was offered a fellowship at the Institut Africain de Développement Économique et de Planification (IDEP). Until 1970 he worked there as well as being a professor at the university of Poitiers, Dakar and Paris (of Paris VIII, Vincennes). In 1970 he became a chief of the IDEP, which he managed until 1980. In 1980 Amin left the IDEP and became a director of the Third World Forum in Dakar. (full text).

… Amin argues for a globalization based on the needs of the periphery, not the center, and for “de-linking” development from capital investment … (full text).

He says: ”History has proven that capitalism, like all social systems, is able at each stage of its expansion to overcome its own permanent contradictions, but not without worsening the violence with which they will be experienced by succeeding generations. This is not at all foreign to the Marxian spirit, which I express in the proposition that the human enterprise remains underdetermined, that it is not foreclosed by some necessity that is tied to the development of either the productive forces or any other metasocial force. More than ever humanity is confronted with two choices: to let itself be led by capitalism’s unfolding logic to a fate of collective suicide or, on the contrary, to give birth to the enormous human possibilities carried by that world-haunting spectre of communism ». (full text).

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Samir Amin – Egypt

Listen to this video: Mangoro Dja. Entrevista Samir Amin, 8.51 minutes (in french with spanish subtitles);

Read: U.S. Imperialism, Europe, and the Middle East, November 2004.

… This commitment to reflection, debate, and self-critique continues to flourish, as exemplified by the rich reader/sourcebook ‘A Political Programme for the World Social Forum WSF‘. Compiled recently by Jai Sen and others at the India Institute for Critical Action: Centre in Movement (CACIM), the volume serves as a framework for ongoing dialogue about the Bamako Agreement, itself an ambitious attempt to articulate a political platform for the WSF spearheaded by Samir Amin and the World Forum for Alternative (WFA) … (full text).

Find: his articles on Google Scholar.

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Jerry Mander – USA

Linked with the International forum on globalization, and with the Foundation for deep ecology. And with Jerry Mander of November 30, 2007.

He is an American activist best known for his book ‘Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television’ (1977), and for his contribution to a book on an unrelated topic, ‘The Great International Paper Airplane Book’ (1971). Mander worked in advertising for 15 years, including five as partner and president of Freeman, Mander & Gossage in San Francisco. In 1971 he founded the first non-profit advertising agency in the United States, Public Interest Communications, which worked on campaigns to prevent dams in the Grand Canyon, found Redwood National Park, and stop the American project to build a supersonic transport. He is currently the director of the International Forum on Globalization and the program director for Megatechnology and Globalization at the Foundation for Deep Ecology. (full text).

He says: ”The point is the way new technologies are introduced to us without a full discussion of how they are going to affect the planet, social relationships, political relationships, human health, nature, our conceptions of nature, and our conceptions of ourselves. Every technology that comes along affects these things. Cars, for example, have changed society completely. Had there been a debate about the existence of cars, we would have asked, do we want the entire landscape to be paved over? Do we want society to move into concrete urban centers? Do we want one resource – oil – to dominate human and political relationships in the world? The Gulf War resulted from our choice of the car a hundred years ago ». (full text).

Read: How I moved from advertising glamour to anti-globalisation fervour, 2006. (full text).

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Jerry Mander – USA

Some of Jerry Mander’s many videos on YouTube:

He says also: « Our culture lacks a philosophical basis, an understanding of the appropriate human role on earth, that would inform these developments before they happen.

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Heisoo Shin – South Korea

Linked with Asian Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development APWLD, and with Korea Women’s HotLine KWHL. And also with Korea fails to tap female workforce.

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

She is currently Vice-Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, a representative on the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan and a visiting professor at the Graduate School of NGO Studies, Kyung Hee University in Seoul. Ms Shin is a past winner of the 1st Women’s Human Rights Award – Women, Law and Development International, Washington DC. (full text).

She says: « We have established that rape and sexual slavery during wartime are violations of women’s rights and should be punished. Because of our movement, hopefully such a thing will never happen again ».

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Heisoo Shin – South Korea

She is in the executive committee of the ‘Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan‘, (Homepage). She works for the Korea Women’s HotLine, and for the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law & Development.

Read:

Heisoo Shin has been a leader in bringing the issues of sexual slavery and other women’s human rights abuses to the forefront of the international justice agenda. She served for seven years as president of Hotline for Women in Need, created to receive information from women forced to serve as sexual slaves by the Japanese military in World War II.

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Dick Marty – Switzerland

Linked with Does one have to fight tyranny with the instruments of the tyrants?

Dick Marty is a member of the Council of States of the Swiss Federal Assembly and a member of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, where he is President of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. As special rapporteur for the Council of Europe he was asked to give a report on the alleged existence of CIA secret prisons in Europe. In 2007 he received the Swiss Award in the category of politics. On February 1st, 2007 he was invited to the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland), where he gave a lecture entitled: « Research on Phantom Airplanes and Secret Detention Centres: Does one have to fight tyranny with the instruments of the tyrants »? (full long text, May 18, 2007).

Same text/same date on Global Research.ca.

CIA agents’ testimony to boost new report into secret renditions: Swiss Senator Dick Marty said yesterday that the latest volume of his report for the Council of Europe into the alleged secret transfer of terrorist suspects by the United States will include statements from disgruntled CIA agents. « They spoke to me because they found what was happening to be disgusting », Marty said in an interview with Swiss newspaper La Liberte. « Their statements will help to ‘strengthen the findings of the first report’ published on June 6, 2006, on the secret activities of the CIA in Europe », Marty said. The latest volume of his report will be presented to the Council of Europe on June 8 in Paris. (full text, May 5, 2007 AFP).

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Dick Marty – Switzerland

An Opportunity Seized: In its zeal to please U.S., Romania tramples foreigners’ rights, by Paul Radu, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, May 24, 2007.

CIA secret rendition exposed, May 4, 2007.

Put the word GUANTANAMO in the search tool of YouTube and find more than 2000 shorter or longer Videos.

Read: Information Memorandum II, by Rapporteur Dick Marty, Switzerland, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

Listen to this Videos (all three in italian):

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Malek Chebel – Algeria & France

Malek Chebel was born in the Algerian town of Constantine in 1953. He studied in Algeria until 1980 and then in Paris, where he now lives. As a psychologist, anthropologist and sexologist, an indefatigable archaeologist of the world of the Arabian and Islamic imagination, he has published major works on the real and imaginary Arabic world of Islam: ‘Le corps dans la tradition au Maghreb’, ‘La Formation de l’identité politique’, ‘L’Esprit de sérail’, ‘La Féminisation du monde’, ‘L’Encyclopédie de l’amour en Islam’, ‘Dictionnaire des symboles musulmans’, ‘Traité du raffinement’, Payot, 1999, etc.

He is an advocate of plain language and his preference is for highly meticulous analyses and rational arguments. He endeavours to gain a better knowledge of the basic writings of Islamic culture by studying them academically. Click on the links and listen to his speaks … (full text).

He says: « In France, Muslim girls want to wear the veil at school, whereas in Qatar, 200 girls demonstrated to be allowed to go to school without a veil … and: A Muslim Cleric is Better Received When He Speaks to People Who Are Frustrated and Have No Prospect of Sensual Pleasure ».

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Malek Chebel – Algeria & France

Manifeste pour un Islam des lumières (Broché), de Malek Chebel (Auteur).

He says also: ”Europe is too lenient with Islamists … Fundamentalist Muslims are true fanatics. They consider progress the enemy of Islam […] They are narrow-minded ideologues who use the Koran to achieve sinister political aims … We must acknowledge that it is European, Western and modern countries that grant Islam the possibility to express itself, whereas at the same time, the sharia is being strongly fought against in a few Arab countries … As a Muslim, I feel more protected by the higher democratic principle of the [secular] nation-state than by the sharia, which is interpreted by the religious authorities as they wish, sometimes according to their moods … Sharia has never been a model of good governance in the Arab world. In any case, it must be separated from the political sphere … Too much space is given to Islamists in the media. The more space you give to fundamentalist Islam, the less there is for enlightened Islam. And it is the latter you need in order to live. Only enlightened Islam is compatible with world civilization, with Europe, and with the spirit of the [French] Republic. But times are difficult for moderate people ». (full text).

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