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amita parmar

CORRUPTION  IN  INDIAN EDUCATION  SYSTEM by Sudipsinh Dhaki (Sudipsinh Dhaki) - 0 views

blogs.fanbox.com/corruptioneducation

US Iran Israel Russia Palestine EU North Korea China Nuclear Proliferation obama

shared by amita parmar on 08 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • amita parmar on 08 Aug 11
     
    CORRUPTION IN INDIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM India is a country where education is considered as scared. It is in India were all religion has its own belief in education. As India is a multicultural country with a number of religion present and number of languages spoken education is given importance in every religion.
Pedro Gonçalves

Academic claims Israeli school textbooks contain bias | World news | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...israeli-school-racism-claim

Israel Palestine Education

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 07 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • The Arab with a camel, in an Ali Baba dress. They describe them as vile and deviant and criminal, people who don't pay taxes, people who live off the state, people who don't want to develop," she says. "The only representation is as refugees, primitive farmers and terrorists. You never see a Palestinian child or doctor or teacher or engineer or modern farmer."
  • Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has studied the content of Israeli school books for the past five years, and her account, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, is to be published in the UK this month. She describes what she found as racism– but, more than that, a racism that prepares young Israelis for their compulsory military service.
  • "One question that bothers many people is how do you explain the cruel behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, an indifference to human suffering, the inflicting of suffering. People ask how can these nice Jewish boys and girls become monsters once they put on a uniform. I think the major reason for that is education. So I wanted to see how school books represent Palestinians."
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  • The killing of Palestinians is depicted as something that was necessary for the survival of the nascent Jewish state, she claims. "It's not that the massacres are denied, they are represented in Israeli school books as something that in the long run was good for the Jewish state. For example, Deir Yassin [a pre-1948 Palestinian village close to Jerusalem] was a terrible slaughter by Israeli soldiers. In school books they tell you that this massacre initiated the massive flight of Arabs from Israel and enabled the establishment of a Jewish state with a Jewish majority. So it was for the best. Maybe it was unfortunate, but in the long run the consequences for us were good."
  • Children, she says, grow up to serve in the army and internalise the message that Palestinians are "people whose life is dispensable with impunity. And not only that, but people whose number has to be diminished."
  • The family produced a poster, calling for a peaceful settlement to the conflict, featuring Peled-Elhanan's only daughter, Smadar. It's message was that all children deserve a better future.Then, in 1997, Smadar was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber while shopping in Jerusalem. She was 13. Peled-Elhanan declines to talk about her daughter's death apart from once or twice referring to "the tragedy".At the time, she said that it would strengthen her belief that, without a settlement to the conflict and peaceful coexistence with Palestinians, more children would die. "Terrorist attacks like this are the direct consequence of the oppression, slavery, humiliation and state of siege imposed on the Palestinians," she told TV reporters in the aftermath of Smadar's death.
  • "University professors stopped inviting me to conferences. And when I do speak, the most common reaction is, 'you are anti-Zionist'." Anybody who challenges the dominant narrative in today's Israel, she says, is similarly accused.
  • Asked if Palestinian school books also reflect a certain dogma, Peled-Elhanan claims that they distinguish between Zionists and Jews. "They make this distinction all the time. They are against Zionists, not against Jews."But she concedes that teaching about the Holocaust in Palestinian schools is "a problem, an issue". "Some [Palestinian] teachers refuse to teach the Holocaust as long as Israelis don't teach the Nakba [the Palestinian "catastrophe" of 1948]."
Muslim Academy

Muslim American Society - 0 views

muslim-academy.com/muslim-american-society

Muslim American Society

shared by Muslim Academy on 17 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 17 Dec 12
     
    The Muslim American Society (MAS) is an Islamic reform and revival movement founded in 1993. The efforts of Ahmed Elkadi and Mohammed Mahdi Akefi were quite remarkable. This organization sees jihad as a holy legal right in the defense and spreading of Islam. The Muslim American Society freedom foundation is an affiliate of this great nonprofit organization, and is being championed by its executive director, Mahdi Bray. On many occasions, the Muslim American Society has participated in diplomatic dialogues with the U.S. college of Bishops and the U.S. government. MAS describes itself as, "religious, charitable, social, educational, non-for-profit, Islamic and cultural organization." Its secretary general describes this organization as members of the great Muslim Brotherhood. The sole mission of the Muslim American Society is to promote Islam as a supreme way of life. Islam is essential in building and encouraging a moral and virtuous society, to provide veritable Islamic alternatives to the prevailing problems of the society, to promote family values in line with the teachings of Islam and to promote the humane values of equality, brotherhood, mercy, justice, peace and compassion. Also, to encourage coordination, unity, and cooperation among Muslims and Muslim organizations.
Argos Media

The Monarch Who Declared His Own Revolution | Print Article | Newsweek.com - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/...print

Saudi Arabia King Abdullah

shared by Argos Media on 23 Mar 09 - Cached
  • In the past few weeks, however, things have suddenly accelerated as the king has moved to show the ultraconservative Saudi religious establishment quite literally who's boss. He sacked the head of the feared religious police and the minister of justice, appointed Nora al-Fayez as deputy education minister, making her the highest-ranking female official in the country's history, and moved to equalize the education of women and men under the direction of a favored son-in-law who has been preparing for years to modernize the nation's school system
  • Born into the crumbling palaces of desert tribes in 1923 (the precise date was not recorded), he now rules one of the richest countries on earth. When Abdullah was a child, his father had not yet finished his conquests on the Arabian Peninsula or founded the nation-state that bears the family name.The boy was 6 when his mother died, and as her only son he felt he had to take care of his younger sisters even then. "He had a tough childhood," says Abdullah's daughter Princess Adelah. "He took on a lot of responsibility from the time he was very young." The children grew up amid rebellion and insurrection, with their father's rule threatened by the intolerant Wahhabi Brotherhood that had helped bring him to power.As a grown man, Abdullah witnessed the oil boom and the corrosive effects of spectacular greed—and more fanaticism, more insurrection, including the bloody siege of the Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979. There were dangerous intrigues within the family, too. When Abdel Aziz died in 1953, the succession passed to his son Saud, who was deposed in 1964 by his half-brother Faisal, who was murdered years later by a nephew. When Fahd took the crown in 1982, Abdullah became crown prince, and after Fahd suffered a stroke in 1995, he became acting king.
  • He brought a powerful sense of desert tradition to the job. His mother was from the powerful Shammar tribe that extends from Saudi territory deep into Iraq, Syria and Jordan, and before being named crown prince he had been head of the Saudi National Guard, a force made up of tribal levies from all over the country. He was immersed in Bedouin culture—the same traditional Saudi values that frame the world as Abdullah sees it. "You do not see him being more lenient with his family than with the National Guard," Princess Adelah told NEWSWEEK. "He is very straightforward, very honest, and hates injustice." Ambassador Fraker sees him as "someone who in many ways is a throwback to that desert-warrior ethos where men stand by their word, they look each other straight in the eye and they apply a code of honor."
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  • The king has made history by meeting with the pope (after demanding and getting the acquiescence of Saudi Arabia's religious authorities), but Christian churches are still forbidden on Arabia's sacred soil.Women are still forbidden to drive. They're required to keep their bodies covered (though they may expose their face if they like), and their choices in every aspect of life, personal and professional, are more limited than those of men. Saudi law treats women, at best, as second-class citizens
  • Whatever you do, don't make King Abdullah angry. In 2001 and 2002 he threatened to rethink the U.S.-Saudi strategic partnership if Washington did not do something to stop the suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. In short order, George W. Bush became the first American president to openly advocate the creation of a viable Palestinian state. When Bush started to backpedal on diplomatic efforts to realize that goal, Abdullah visited the Crawford ranch and reportedly delivered an angry ultimatum; Bush's then secretary of state, Colin Powell, was later quoted as calling it a "near-death experience."
  • Nevertheless, the king prefers honorable conciliation over confrontation. In 2002 he tried to end the Arab-Israeli conflict by imposing a deal on the Arab League that would offer peace between Israel and all of the Arab world if Israel would pull back to its 1967 borders, allow East Jerusalem to become the Palestinian capital and make some accommodation with Arab refugees from the wars of 1948 and 1967. The plan won't stay on the table forever, he warned during the recent Israeli bombing of Gaza.
  • The king is likewise distressed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's popularity on the Arab street. The Iranian president keeps gleefully stirring up trouble in the region, apparently oblivious to the harm he does with his encouragement of extremists, with his venomous posturing toward Israel and with the nuclear program he's revealing bit by bit, like a bomb hidden behind seven veils. "Don't play with fire," Abdullah warned Ahmadinejad when they met face to face in early 2007. The Saudis have quietly worked to undermine Iranian influence in Lebanon and even in Syria, Tehran's old ally. "The Iranians cannot match us financially, so why not give it a try?" said a Saudi analyst who asked not to be cited by name because of the sensitivities involved.
Pedro Gonçalves

David Cameron faces EU cabinet crisis as ministers break ranks | Politics | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ferendum-cabinet-david-cameron

UK EU Eurosceptics

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 13 May 13 - No Cached
  • David Cameron is struggling to maintain Tory discipline over Europe after cabinet loyalists Michael Gove and Philip Hammond said on Sunday they would vote to leave the European Union if a referendum were to be held now.
  • Gove, the education minister, confirmed for the first time that he believes that leaving the EU would have "certain advantages", while Hammond, the defence secretary, later said he too would vote to leave if he was asked to endorse the EU "exactly as it is today".
  • The remarks, which follow similar calls by Lord Lawson and Michael Portillo last week for Britain to leave Europe, are particularly significant because they are the first cabinet ministers to say they would vote to quit if an immediate referendum were held.
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  • The prime minister says that, if elected with a majority in 2015, he would hold a referendum by 2017. This would take place after a renegotiation of Britain's membership terms.
  • Hammond, interviewed for Pienaar's Politics on BBC radio, later said: "If the choice is between a European Union written exactly as it is today and not being a part of that then I have to say that I'm on the side of the argument that Michael Gove has put forward."
  • Theresa May, the home secretary, said she too would abstain. But she declined to say whether she would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were held now. The prime minister will be in the US when the Commons vote is held.
  • Boris Johnson backed Tory backbench demands for an EU referendum bill and warned Cameron he must make it clear Britain is "ready to walk away" unless its relationship is fundamentally reformed,
  • But the mayor of London also suggested that leaving the EU would expose the idea that most of Britain's problems are self-inflicted. "If we left the EU, we would end this sterile debate, and we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by 'Bwussels', but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and underinvestment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure," Johnson wrote in his Daily Telegraph column."Why are we still, person for person, so much less productive than the Germans? That is now a question more than a century old, and the answer is nothing to do with the EU. In or out of the EU, we must have a clear vision of how we are going to be competitive in a global economy."
  • The prime minister's decision to highlight the benefits of EU membership is likely to be welcomed by Obama, whose advisers expressed concern in the runup to Cameron's EU speech in January, when he outlined his referendum plan.
Pedro Gonçalves

Swedish riots spark surprise and anger | World news | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...sweden-europe-news

Immigration EU Europe Sweden

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 26 May 13 - No Cached
  • "These people, they should integrate in this society and just try a little bit more to be like Swedish citizens."Scratch beneath the surface and this is a sentiment shared by many in a country that arguably has the world's most generous asylum policies. Sweden has taken in more than 11,000 refugees from Syria since 2012, more per head than any other European country, and it has absorbed more than 100,000 Iraqis and 40,000 Somalis over the past two decades. About 1.8 million of its 9.5 million people are first- or second-generation immigrants.
  • So it has come as a shock for many Swedes to discover the scale of resentment. It's not hard to find it. Aleks, whose parents came from Kosovo, says: "I hate the police. I hate the cops. I think setting fire to cars in the neighbourhood should stop, but I don't think throwing rocks at the cops should stop."
  • The trigger for the riots – police shooting dead a 69-year-old Portuguese man called Lenine Relvas-Martins
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  • Martins had been brandishing a knife on his balcony, angry after a confrontation with local youths. Police then broke into his house and shot him in front of his Finnish wife. They say she was at risk. She denies it.The police then inflamed the situation last Sunday, reportedly calling young people causing a disturbance "monkeys" and "negroes".
  • there's no doubt Husby has better facilities than deprived areas in Britain. But it is also more segregated. About 85% of people here have their origins outside Sweden.
  • "The politicians are thinking the wrong way. They want to help people, but you never help people when you put 30,000 to 50,000 in one place," complains the man painting at the library.
  • "For a lot of people who live in segregated areas, the only Swedes they meet are social workers or police officers. It's amazing how many have never had a Swedish friend."
  • A third of the 2,500 white, ethnic Swedes who lived in Husby 10 years ago have left.
  • Inequality has also grown faster in Sweden over the past decade than in any other developed country, according to thinktank the OECD, which puts the blame partly on tax cuts paid for by reductions in welfare spending.
  • According to official statistics, more than 10% of those aged 25 to 55 in Husby are unemployed, compared with 3.5% in Stockholm as a whole. Those that do have jobs earn 40% less than the city average.
  • Esmail Jamshidi, a 23-year-old medical student born and educated in Husby, says young people don't lack opportunities."It's a very recent development, this ghetto mentality," he says. "Immigrants come here, and most leave after a decade or two. A very small percentage of them don't, and this last group are left
  • The older generation of immigrants seems as puzzled by the anger as Swedes. Ali, the owner of Café Unic, a Persian cafe in Husby's main square, says he tried living in America but came back. "I love this country. I mean it," he says. "I'm telling my kids every day to remember that you are born here, in Sweden. I love this country because of the way they built it: because of my taxes, and other people's taxes, everyone has a nice place to live. It's a very, very nice and good idea."
Pedro Gonçalves

Only a miracle can save Sarkozy - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

France EU Society Far right

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 26 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Nearly 20% of the electorate voted for the National Front, the party of the extreme right. To add insult to injury, many young voters supported the party's candidate, Marine Le Pen. Youth is supposed to be synonymous with hope. With the rise of unemployment and the decline of belief in the value of the European Union, it seems young people, especially poorly educated ones, are motivated by fear much more than by hope.
  • Hollande is a Social Democrat; he does not have the means to be a revolutionary. As for Europe, Hollande in power in France would merely be an accelerating factor in the slow evolution of the EU away from a strict austerity policy, which the Germans themselves have started to question.
Pedro Gonçalves

France's Hollande could be secret reformer | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...hollande-idUKBRE82E0GT20120315

France François Hollande

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 15 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Hollande is keen to stress his fiscal prudence. His manifesto calls for higher taxes on banks, big firms and the rich to help cut the public deficit while pumping more funds into education and job creation.He also wants to cap executive pay, create a financial transaction tax and separate banks' retail and investment arms.He launched his campaign by declaring that Big Finance was his real adversary and should pay for the global financial crisis, and he has called for a 75 percent top tax rate on income above 1 million euros a year.
Pedro Gonçalves

College Degrees: More and More, They're Just a Piece of Paper - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...eyre-just-a-piece-of-paper.php

Education Entrepreneurship Jobs

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 26 May 12 - No Cached
  • “A computer science degree from 1987 isn’t worth much if they haven’t stayed current. I’d rather present a self-taught developer if he has a couple of shipped products under his belt.” She does admit that a degree can be a good tie-breaker, and a paper from a top-tier school shows an applicant “was at least smart enough to get in.” In the end, though, “Clients are interested in ability. If you have the chops and the experience, you’re getting hired – unless [the client] is looking for a front-pager.”
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - End of empire for Western universities? - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...business-18646423

Education EU India China US Society OECD

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 11 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • The forecasts for the shape of the "global talent pool" in 2020 show China as rapidly expanding its graduate numbers - set to account for 29% of the world's graduates aged between 25 and 34.
  • The biggest faller is going to be the United States - down to 11% - and for the first time pushed into third place, behind India.
  • The US and the countries of the European Union combined are expected to account for little more than a quarter of young graduates.
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  • Across the industrialised world, graduate numbers are increasing - just not as quickly as China, where they have risen fivefold in a decade.
  • This changing world map will see Brazil having a bigger share of graduates than Germany, Turkey more than Spain, Indonesia three times more than France.
  • The UK is bucking the trend, projected to increase its share from 3% in 2010 to 4% in 2020.
  • "There are more students in China than ever before - but they still use Western mechanisms to publish results, they accept the filters," says Prof Mayer-Schonberger.
  • The maps also reveal how much Africa and South America are losing out in this new scramble for digital power.
  • "Each era has its own distinct geography. In the information age, it's not dependent on roads or waterways, but on bases of knowledge. "This is a new kind of industrial map. Instead of coal and steel it will be about universities and innovation."
Pedro Gonçalves

Analysis: Israel's Iran strategy: Bombs? Bluff? Both? | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...r-israel-idUKTRE7B61MV20111207

Israel Iran

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Ever a big-picture thinker, the U.S.-educated premier gave a speech this week commending Israel's founding premier David Ben-Gurion for making fateful decisions at a "heavy price," despite protests heard at home and abroad.Commentators, on the alert these days for any clue about a possible strike on Iran, spotted a subtext - that Netanyahu, too, was ready to take lonely action in Israel's interest.He could hope for a repeat of the 1981 attack on Iraq's atomic reactor and a similar sortie against Syria in 2007, when the anger of Washington's initial reactions quickly faded.
  • "So there's a huge public relations issue here: Can you make a credible case over the head of the administration, and get the American public to buy into the pain that is going to follow -- Americans being killed in terrorism, oil shock, whatever it is."For now, Kurtzer estimated, Obama administration warnings against unilateral Israeli strikes on Iran would account for "5 percent" of Israeli deliberations, with the Netanyahu government's military calculations taking the lion's share.
  • Its priorities include fending off Iran's promised missile reprisals and containing potential knock-on border wars with the Lebanese and Palestinian guerrillas who are allied to Tehran.
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  • Former Mossad spymaster Meir Dagan has predicted that Syria, Iran's key Arab ally and now beset by a bloody domestic uprising, might also choose to join in the foreign conflict.
  • Public reluctance has been galvanized by the unusually vocal questioning by Dagan and some other retired security chiefs of Netanyahu and Barak's secret strategizing.
  • These critics have urged U.S.-led sanctions on Tehran be given more time. Israel and its Western partners are also widely believed to have been sabotaging Iran's uranium enrichment and ballistic arms projects, though Barak said any such covert campaign cannot be relied upon to finish the job.
  • A December 1 poll by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the U.S. think-tank Brookings found that 43 percent of Israeli Jews backed attacking Iran, while 41 percent would be opposed.
    • Pedro Gonçalves
      Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Dec 11
       
      Israeli public evenly divided on an attack on Iran
  • By a ratio of two to one, respondents said they would agree to stripping Israel of its own atomic arsenal as part of a regional disarmament deal. Ninety percent predicted Iran, which says its nuclear project is peaceful, would obtain in time become a nuclear military power.
    • Pedro Gonçalves
      Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Dec 11
       
      The Israeli public shows a willingness to get rid of Israel's nuclear arsenal in "Middle East free of nuclear weapons" framework - a nukes for peace?
  • Slowing its progress toward that point, however, may be enough of an objective for Israel, which Barak assessed last month stood to lose "maybe not even 500 dead" to Iranian retaliation.
  • Should it end up worse, "there are international mechanisms that would curtail the war between Iran and Israel," former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said last month.But Yadlin, who was among the eight F-16 pilots who carried out the 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak reactor, sounded circumspect about Israeli military capabilities against Iranian targets that are numerous, distant, fortified and on the alert for attacks - in contrast to Saddam Hussein's sole installation near Baghdad.
  • Israel, he said, should "open lines of dialogue with those who have superior operational abilities than we do" -- effectively, shelving unilateralism in favor of cooperation with the United States and its NATO allies
  • Dan Schueftan, head of the National Security Studies Centre at Haifa University, said Israel's recent hawkish talk could be meant for foreign ears: "Because they (Netanyahu and Barak) fear that if it is believed that there is no possibility of Israel attacking Iran, the United States won't consider taking action."Even Dagan publicly dangled the possibility that he has been playing into a propaganda ruse, telling Israeli television: "If Dagan is arguing against a conflict, then the Iranian conclusion is ... 'Listen, these Jews are crazy. They could attack Iran!'"
  • But posture can also be self-realizing. Before launching his surprise attack on Israel at Yom Kippur in 1973, Egypt's Anwar Sadat repeatedly issued mobilization orders to his forces while also saying he was willing to consider peace negotiations, lulling Israelis into believing Cairo was not a serious threat.
Argos Media

After Gaza, Israel Grapples With Crisis of Isolation - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...19israel.html

Israel Branding Avigdor Lieberman Hosni Mubarak

shared by Argos Media on 19 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Israel, whose founding idea was branded as racism by the United Nations General Assembly in 1975 and which faced an Arab boycott for decades, is no stranger to isolation. But in the weeks since its Gaza war, and as it prepares to inaugurate a hawkish right-wing government, it is facing its worst diplomatic crisis in two decades.
  • The issue has not gone unnoticed here, but it has generated two distinct and somewhat contradictory reactions. On one hand, there is real concern. Global opinion surveys are being closely examined and the Foreign Ministry has been granted an extra $2 million to improve Israel’s image through cultural and information diplomacy.
  • But there is also a growing sense that outsiders do not understand Israel’s predicament, so criticism is dismissed.“People here feel that no matter what you do you are going to be blamed for all the problems in the Middle East,” said Eytan Gilboa, a professor of politics and international communication at Bar Ilan University. “Even suicide bombings by Palestinians are seen as our fault for not establishing a Palestinian state.”
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  • Javier Solana, foreign policy chief for the European Union, said in Brussels on Monday that the group would reconsider its relationship with Israel if it did not remain committed to establishing a Palestinian state.
  • Mr. Lieberman also has few fans in Egypt, which has acted as an intermediary for Israel in several matters. Some months ago Mr. Lieberman complained that President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had not agreed to come to Israel. “If he doesn’t want to, he can go to hell,” he added.“Imagine that Hossein Mousavi wins the Iranian presidency this spring and he names Mohammad Khatami as his foreign minister,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iran analyst in Israel, referring to two Iranian leaders widely viewed as in the pragmatist camp. “With Lieberman as foreign minister here, Israel will have a much harder time demonstrating to the world that Iran is the destabilizing factor in the region.”
  • Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has already criticized Israeli plans to demolish Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, and her department has criticized Israel’s banning of certain goods from Gaza.This represents a distinct shift in tone from the Bush era. An internal Israeli Foreign Ministry report during the Gaza war noted that compared with others in the United States, “liberals and Democrats show far less enthusiasm for Israel and its leadership.”
  • Some Israeli officials say they believe that what the country needs is to “rebrand” itself. They say Israel spends far too much time defending actions against its enemies. By doing so, they say, the narrative is always about conflict.“When we show Sderot, others also see Gaza,” said Ido Aharoni, manager of a rebranding team at the Foreign Ministry. “Everything is twinned when seen through the conflict. The country needs to position itself as an attractive personality, to make outsiders see it in all its reality. Instead, we are focusing on crisis management. And that is never going to get us where we need to go over the long term.” Mr. Gilboa, the political scientist, said branding was not enough. “We need to do much more to educate the world about our situation,” he said. Regarding the extra $2 million budgeted for this, he said: “We need 50 million. We need 100 million.”
Argos Media

Record numbers join anti-Sarkozy protests | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...icolas-sarkozy-france-protests

France Economy

shared by Argos Media on 20 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Record numbers took to the streets of France yesterday in the biggest demonstrations since Nicolas Sarkozy's election, to protest about his handling of the economic crisis. Unions estimated that more than three million people took part in demonstrations across the country, in the second general strike over the economic crisis in two months. Police put figures at about 1.2 million. With one in three people supporting the protest, it had the highest public backing for a strike in a decade.
  • Teachers and doctors protested against his long-standing reform plan, saying public-sector job cuts would kill schools and hospitals. University staff are continuing their seven-week strike against higher education reform with sit-ins and occupations. Private-sector employees, including supermarket cashiers, bank clerks and car workers, took to the street over poor pay, factory closures and the return of a traditional French scourge: unemployment, now rising at its fastest rate in 10 years.
  • The general strike disrupted transport, schools, airports, government offices and even state theatres. Unions demanded job protection, an increase in the minimum wage and a U-turn on Sarkozy's early move to cut taxes for the mega-rich. But the government has insisted there will be no concessions.
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  • Sarkozy has focused on a €27bn stimulus plan through public and private investment instead of boosting consumers' pockets with major tax-cuts or higher welfare spending. He argues that without investment leading to job creation, France, with an already weak private sector and stuttering economy, will not be able to recover as fast other countries.
  • After the last general strike in January, Sarkozy moved to defuse tension by introducing certain tax cuts and welfare payments for the poorest families. Unions said it was not enough, but the president's advisers this week said there would be no more immediate measures. "Sarkozy says there's no money for the public sector, that state coffers are dry, then he miraculously finds money to bail out the car industry," said Olivier Langillier, a nurse at the Paris march.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | N Korea's Kim 'elected' to seat - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7931783.stm

North Korea Kim Jong-il Kim Jong-un

shared by Argos Media on 09 Mar 09 - Cached
  • North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il has been unanimously elected to a seat in North Korea's parliament.
  • State media has claimed a 100% turnout in Sunday's elections for the rubber-stamp Supreme People's Assembly.
  • Voting, which was compulsory, was for just one pre-approved candidate in each constituency.
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  • the soldiers were seen lining up to collect their ballot papers. Without even glancing at the name of the single candidate listed in each constituency, they can be seen bowing to a portrait of Kim Jong-il before dutifully casting their votes.
  • North Korea watchers have been scrutinising this election for the possible emergence of one name - Kim Jong-un. He is the 26-year-old, Swiss-educated, third son of Kim Jong-Il and thought to be his father's most likely successor.
Argos Media

Haass: Why Obama Should Lift the Cuba Embargo | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/...188147

Cuba US Richard Haas Cuban Embargo

shared by Argos Media on 12 Mar 09 - Cached
  • There are signs that change may finally be coming to Cuba, 50 years after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. In a major shakeup, Raúl Castro, Fidel's brother, fired several high-level officials last week
  • Some American conservatives maintain that all this is reason enough for the United States to persist in its policy of ignoring Cuba diplomatically and sanctioning it economically. At least in principle, one could argue that the revolution is running out of steam and that regime change from within may finally be at hand. The problem is that this argument ignores Cuban reality. The country is not near the precipice of collapse. To the contrary, the intertwined party, government and military have matters well in hand. The population, ensured basic necessities along with access to education and health care, is neither inclined to radical change nor in a position to bring it about.
  • The American policy of isolating Cuba has failed. Officials boast that Havana now hosts more diplomatic missions than any other country in the region save Brazil. Nor is the economic embargo working. Or worse: it is working, but for countries like Canada, South Korea and dozens of others that are only too happy to help supply Cuba with food, generators and building materials.
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  • The policy of trying to isolate Cuba also works—perversely enough—to bolster the Cuban regime. The U.S. embargo provides Cuba's leaders a convenient excuse—the country's economic travails are due to U.S. sanctions, they can claim, not their own failed policies. The lack of American visitors and investment also helps the government maintain political control.
  • There is one more reason to doubt the wisdom of continuing to isolate Cuba. However slowly, the country is changing. The question is whether the United States will be in a position to influence the direction and pace of this change. We do not want to see a Cuba that fails, in which the existing regime gives way to a repressive regime of a different stripe or to disorder marked by drugs, criminality, terror or a humanitarian crisis that prompts hundreds of thousands of Cubans to flee their country for the United States.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Boos as Lebanon camp is rebuilt - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7933691.stm

Palestinians Lebanon Nahr al-Bared

shared by Argos Media on 10 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The United Nations has laid a foundation stone at the Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon to mark the formal start of reconstruction there. The Palestinian refugee camp was destroyed in heavy fighting between Islamist militants and the Lebanese army in 2007.
  • there is not enough money to rebuild completely, and some of its residents booed as work began.
  • Only 50m (165 feet) away from the VIP guests, several hundred Palestinian refugees booed from behind barbed wire.
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  • Palestinians have been here for more than 60 years - since the creation of Israel - but they are still barred from at least 70 professions, have no access to state education or healthcare, and cannot move freely or buy land. These conditions turn the Palestinian camps into a breeding ground for extremism, a time bomb which will inevitably explode according to a recent report by the think tank, the International Crisis Group.
Pedro Gonçalves

2 Chinese Schools Said to Be Linked to Online Attacks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...19china.html

China US Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 20 Feb 10 - Cached
  • A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation.
  • the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed.
  • Computer security experts, including investigators from the National Security Agency, have been working since then to pinpoint the source of the attacks. Until recently, the trail had led only to servers in Taiwan.
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  • The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School
  • Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google.
  • Within the computer security industry and the Obama administration, analysts differ over how to interpret the finding that the intrusions appear to come from schools instead of Chinese military installations or government agencies. Some analysts have privately circulated a document asserting that the vocational school is being used as camouflage for government operations. But other computer industry executives and former government officials said it was possible that the schools were cover for a “false flag” intelligence operation being run by a third country. Some have also speculated that the hacking could be a giant example of criminal industrial espionage, aimed at stealing intellectual property from American technology firms.
  • Independent researchers who monitor Chinese information warfare caution that the Chinese have adopted a highly distributed approach to online espionage, making it almost impossible to prove where an attack originated. “We have to understand that they have a different model for computer network exploit operations,” said James C. Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist and a director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis in Washington. Rather than tightly compartmentalizing online espionage within agencies as the United States does, he said, the Chinese government often involves volunteer “patriotic hackers” to support its policies.
  • Google’s decision to step forward and challenge China over the intrusions has created a highly sensitive issue for the United States government. Shortly after the company went public with its accusations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting that the country’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall.
  • A report on Chinese online warfare prepared for the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission in October 2009 by Northrop Grumman identified six regions in China with military efforts to engage in such attacks. Jinan, site of the vocational school, was one of the regions.
Argos Media

Israeli military occupation 'severely compromises Bethlehem' | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...israel-army-bethlehem-un

UN Israel Palestine Bethlehem Israeli Settlements Avigdor Lieberman

shared by Argos Media on 07 May 09 - Cached
  • The Israeli military occupation around Bethlehem is severely restricting its growth, undermining its economy and compromising its future, according to a UN report.The combined effect of Israeli annexation, the West Bank barrier, settlements, settler bypass roads, closed military zones and Israeli nature reserves, has left only 13% of the 660 sq km Bethlehem governorate available for Palestinian use, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs says.
  • While there are about 175,000 Palestinians living in the Bethlehem area, there are now at least 86,000 Israelis also living there in 19 settlements, and their number is growing, even though settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law. Two-thirds of the governorate is under full Israeli security and administrative control.
  • The barrier around the Bethlehem area, part concrete, part steel, is still being built, but when finished will seal off the city itself from east Jerusalem and prevent growth to the north and west. On the western side of the barrier about 64 sq km will be isolated, home to 21,000 Palestinians living in some of the most fertile agricultural land in the area. The Palestinians there will face reduced access to trading markets and health and education services.
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  • In Nu'man, one of the villages the UN says is "living in limbo", the situation is particularly dire. The village is surrounded on three sides by Israel's West Bank barrier and on another by the Israeli settlement of Har Homa. The village entrance is blocked by an Israeli checkpoint to anyone other than Nu'man residents. Permits are not given for new homes in the village, and the younger generation is being forced out. Israel annexed Nu'man to Jerusalem after the 1967 war, but never gave its people Jerusalem residency.
  • Israel's hardline foreign minister, ­Avigdor Lieberman, lives in Nokdim, one of the Jewish settlements in the Beth­lehem area, some way to the east of Israel's barrier.
Pedro Gonçalves

Ahmadinejad's Election Rivals in Iran Differ on Nuclear Program, Israel, U.S. - washing... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009052203693.html

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mir Hossein Mousavi Mehdi Karroubi Nuclear Proliferation

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • Ahmadinejad's challengers are backed by a coalition of prominent Muslim clerics and veteran Iranian politicians who oppose Ahmadinejad's policies both at home and abroad, turning this election into an unusually stark confrontation between two political factions with opposing views of the future of Iran.
  • Ahmadinejad's main challengers advocate better relations with the United States. They promise to ensure that Iran's nuclear program will have strictly peaceful purposes, and they say the Holocaust should not be an issue in Iranian politics. "Ahmadinejad's comments on the Holocaust were a great service to Israel," Mehdi Karroubi, a cleric and the most outspoken opposition candidate, told a group of students in April. "What has happened that we now have to support Hitler?" he asked. "This is none of our business."
  • Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who is backed mainly by Tehran's educated urban elite, has stressed that he would calm international opposition to Iran's nuclear program by providing guarantees -- which he has not specified -- that Iran will not turn its research on atomic energy into an effort to build nuclear weapons.
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  • All the candidates, including Ahmadinejad, have pledged to continue Iran's efforts to enrich uranium, despite U.N. sanctions. All of them share hostility toward Israel. But the challengers say Iran should reach out to other nations and soften the tone of its foreign policy, which is largely set by the country's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. During a visit to Iran's Kurdish region this month, Khamenei urged voters not to support "pro-Western" candidates.
Pedro Gonçalves

Are we still afraid the Jewish state won't last? - Haaretz - Israel News - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...1097534.html

Israel Zionism

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Jul 09 - Cached
  • We can offer several arguments for and against the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The reasons in favor seem clear: On the tactical and strategic level, the demand puts to the test the willingness of the Palestinians, the Syrians and the countries of the Middle East in general, to make a quantum leap when it comes to accepting our existence. They would do so by recognizing the unique character of Israel and accepting it as a fact that should no longer be questioned. This is psychologically significant, with diplomatic-security implications whose importance should not be downplayed. There is also the hope that formal recognition of Israel's Jewish character will check the demand to implement the refugees' "right of return"; clarify to the minorities in Israel their status as citizens, while drawing a red line that will emphasize the pointlessness of aspirations to undermine the Jewish character of the state, and reinforce global legitimization of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
  • it is impossible to ignore the suspicion that Israel's demand for recognition also stems from an unconscious, collective factor that is very problematic. We may still be suffering from the exile-induced fear that a Jewish state will not last a fear accompanied by expressions of a lack of confidence in our strength or a surfeit of such confidence. This is speculation, but it can explain patently irrational diplomatic-security viewpoints, on both the left and the right, which are hard to understand otherwise. If this assessment is correct then we are talking about a dangerous phenomenon that distorts our judgment.
  • It is not accepted in those parts of international law that deal with the recognition of states: A country is recognized de facto or fully without any determination regarding its essence as a secular, Catholic, or Muslim country et al. Moreover, the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state implies that our character depends on such recognition, which our opponents can also withdraw.
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  • A particularly important consideration is one derived from the assumption that Israel wants, in good faith, to progress to as stable a peace as possible. To the extent that this assumption is correct, the demand for explicit recognition of Israel as a Jewish state adds a grave and even fatal difficulty. Because even Arab rulers who want to recognize Israel and to normalize relations with it will be unable to permit themselves to explicitly recognize Israel as a Jewish state  in order to avoid undermining the stability of their regimes.
  • Added to the considerations for and against is the fact that our character as a Jewish state depends on us and us alone. Tactics to reinforce and deepen this character include demographic policy, a new arrangement of the status of religious institutions in Israel, accelerated conversion, genuine changes in the education system, a strengthening of pluralistic Jewish symbols combined with additional steps to consolidate Jewish identity and identification among the youth.
  • The question therefore is whether it is possible to create a synthesis that combines the advantages of recognition without the drawbacks of the demand for recognition. I think it is. I would recommend legislating a "basic law on a constitution" that would be passed by a special majority of the Knesset, with a higher status than the other basic laws, including immunity from judicial appeal. This law will assert that Israel is a Jewish state and the state of the Jewish people as a whole, while at the same time being a democratic state of all its citizens.
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