China's One Belt, One Road: Pakistan's Cautionary Tale

Back in 2015, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) section of China's One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative was expected to bring economic development and jobs to Pakistan and also provide substantial benefits to China. The new deep water port at Gwadar, Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea would enable China to transport oil from the Middle East up through Pakistan to western China rather than across the Indian Ocean and through the congested Malacca Straight between Indonesia and Malaysia to the South China Sea. By encircling India, the CPEC offered a way to balance or neutralize democratic India's influence in the region, but the CPEC also involved China in India's Kashmir border dispute with Pakistan high in the Himalaya Mountains. Shots fired on the border in Septemebr, 2020, violated an Indo-Chinese agreement. Pakistan found the terms of the CPEC less than transparent and a debt burden Beijing was unwilling to renegotiate. The Chinese support Pakistan expected for its border dispute with India failed to materialize. In fact, in September, 2017, China and India signed an anti-terrorist declaration that criticized Pakistan for shielding terrorist groups. The US even floats the notion that China might be an ally willing to help persuade Pakistan to pressure its Taliban friends to help stabilize neighboring Afghanistan. The bottom line is: Pakistan's deteriorating economy, made worse by the coronavirus, finds 18 million employees out of work. China, which expects repayment for the CPEC, has no need for Pakistan's textile exports. CPEC construction jobs failed to satisfy Pakistan's need for the education, technical training and scientific research necessary for modern employment, such as monitoring and correcting Pakistan's poor air quality. Finally, the CPEC involves atheistic China with a Muslim country, when China is trying to eliminate the Uighur Muslim culture in Kashgar, home of the Id Kah Mosque, and to control up to one million Uighurs in so-called re-education camps. At the same time, Pakistan's Hindu minority, already discriminated against in better economic times, is converting to Islam just to receive assistance from the government and charities.

Diseases and Cures Travel the Globe

Relatives and teachers need to keep up with findings about diseases in order to protect children. On the other hand, older students can begin to see career opportunities for themselves in medical and medical-related fields, including in the area of bioethics.

Tropical Diseases

Africa is breaking the grip of tropical diseases thanks to a coalition of aid agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and charities that formed Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDS). Health programs in individual countries and radio programs where experts and patients answer questions about treatments and dispel misconceptions also do their part.
     In Sierra Leone, for example, a country once ravished by Ebola, health workers visit villages once a year to provide everyone at risk with drugs for four diseases:

• Elephantiases (lymphatic filariasis). Microscopic worms infest the body and cause extreme irreversible swelling and damage.
• River blindness (onchocerciasis). Blindness caused by black fly bites and worms infecting the body.
• Snail fever (schistosomiasis). Parasitic worm infection that destroys kidneys and the liver.
• (Helminths) Roundworms in soil cause infections that stunt growth and physical development.

By treating all family members with all four drugs at once, Sierra Leone saves money on multiple visits and prevents families from passing diseases to one another.

     Mosquitoes continue to be the ones that transmit malaria, dengue fever, and Zika in tropical areas. In warm, wet weather, they mature faster and become infectious sooner. But even in warm, dry conditions, they find ways to survive underground in storm drains and sewers. In Singapore on a small scale, Trendwatching.com reports innovative pots, decorated with paint infused with the non-toxic mosquito repellent, permethrin, are used to kill mosquitoes trying to survive in water collected in plant pots. (Use keywords, mosquitoes, malaria, dengue, and Zika, to find earlier posts on these subjects.)

Polio

News that polio is staging a comeback in some parts of the world recalls disturbing memories from my childhood. Paralysis from polio required President Franklin Roosevelt to wear leg braces, a neighbor to live in an iron lung, and a playmate to compensate for her withered left arm. When Jonas Salk's polio vaccine became available in the 1960s, we all rushed to take it on sugar cubes.
     Normally, the polio vaccine that carries a live, weakened virus breeds in the recipient's intestines and enters the bloodstream to cause a lifelong protective immune response. But occasionally, once in every 17 million vaccinations, the weakened virus mutates and causes a new strain that can live in poop for six to eight weeks following an innoculation. In countries that lack clean water, adequate toilets, and treatment for sewage, polio is transmitted by drinking water carrying the mutated virus. That seems to be what has happened to cause cases of polio in Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria.

HIV/AIDS and STDs

Ever since the International AIDS Society (IAS) established a 90-90-90 goal in 2014, countries have aimed to make sure 90% of their population knows they have the disease, 90% of those are taking antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), and virus levels in 90% taking ARVs are negligible. Worldwide, only a 75-79-81 goal is reached.
      In less developed countries, HIV is combated by circumcising male foreskins to remove HIV-breeding cells and by paying school tuition for girls who are less susceptible to exchanging sex for food and other benefits, if they have employable skills. In all countries, HIV prevention responds to a combination of two ARVs, tenofovir and emtricitabine found in Truvada. Prevention still depends on those at risk coming forward and governments willing to help pay for treatment.
     After being raised and educated in Europe, Dr. Agnes Binagwano began returning to Rwanda with suitcases filled with medical supplies. Working with the government, she began an HIV program and trained health workers to visit villagers in their homes. To build trust for Rwanda's health care program, villagers chose the health workers who care for them.Once the country with the worst child mortality rate, 97% of Rwanda's infants now are vaccinated. The country where genocide killed nearly one million in 1994 also has the University of Global Health Equity in Kigali, rural health centers, and a nationwide health insurance program.
     Still a problem, ARVs give gay and bisexual men a false impression that these drugs prevent all sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). And birth control pills and other forms of female contraception give heterosexual couples the false impression male partners need not use condoms. Consequently, syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhoea infections all are on the rise from unprotected sex. At the same time, testing has been hit by cuts in funding for preventive education, local health departments, and confidential clinics that cater to adolescents.

Gene Editing

Which human cells the CRISPR-Cas9 technique edits and the changes made promise to treat diseases when engineered cells return to a patient's body. While unintended consequences of CRISPR-Cas9 editing to improve agricultural crops are less of a concern, the studies that find some forms of CRISPR-Cas9 editing delete or rearrange strings of DNA, affect non-targeted genes, and might cause cancer in humans motivate the search for technological techniques that produce only intended results.
     Genetic engineering capable of removing hereditary predispositions to cancer would, of course,be valuable. Editing into humans destructive hereditary traits passed along to future generations would not.
     Based on the way viruses can penetrate bacteria cells and destroy their defenses, CRISPR editing also is involved in the search for a way to k(ll superbugs resistant to antibiotics. (Use the keywords, antibiotics and CRISPR, to see earlier posts on these subjects.)

Cellphone Radiation

Research continues to study the danger of cellphone radiation from phones and antennas. Emissions from decaying lithium batteries, which remind me of those from black holes, also seem to indicate possible health risks. Keep an eye on findings about brain damage and memory loss from long term studies of new 5G technology. 

Student Elections: Training for the Real Thing

Since votes in elections cause or hinder action, student elections offer a meaningful training ground for affecting change. Even massive demonstrations, such as the March for Our Lives of U.S. students demanding actions to eliminate gun violence, cannot have as great an impact as an elections where voters choose or defeat candidates, such as those funded by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

     Before student elections, urge student voters to discuss the elements of fair and winning elections.

Candidate selection: Should anyone be allowed to run? Should candidates need to get a certain number of signatures? Could committees select candidates? Should there be a primary election to narrow the choice of candidates? What affects a candidate's popularity? Research shows candidates can use status or likability models. Status comes from a person's visibility, dominance, and influence on a group. These candidates gain attention by bullying and disparaging voters and by exercising power over them with control of the media, a commanding voice, and even their height. Likability is related to treating people with respect, cooperating/compromising, and knowing how to help people feel good about themselves. A likable leader connects with people and involves everyone in creating group norms, harmony, and a solution everyone buys into.

Funding: What costs go into an election? Posters, flyers, giveaway items, ballots, voting booths, ballot boxes, travel expenses, communication, staff, including staff for accurate tabulation of ballots.  Who pays for each? Should there be a spending limit? Can candidates allowed to distribute candy or some other type of "bribe"?

Date of election and event scheduling: One day of voting or more? How soon after new students enter a school should an election be scheduled? Should those about to graduate vote for those who will attend next year? Select dates that do not conflict with other major events. When should elections be announced?

Length of campaign: Should campaigns have beginning and ending dates? or be open-ended?

Platform: What is most important to voters? Should voters be surveyed to identify main issues?
Can candidates get away with wild promises?  lies?

Campaign slogans: What to say? Negative or positive themes. How many words? Include candidate's name? Where to use slogan (posters, bumper stickers, yard signs, T-shirts, commercials)? I still remember this slogan a student used in a high school election campaign, "You will not be forgotten. Cast your vote for Kathy Hotten." Check out student election poster samples at
 postermywall.com/index.php/posters/search?s=student election.

Public events: Will each candidate have a campaign kickoff event? Will all candidates give a speech at an all school assembly? Will candidates visit each classroom? Will students be invited to submit questions a moderator could ask candidates at an assembly? How many events?

Dirty tricks:  What are some examples? How will hecklers by handled? Misplaced/stolen ballot boxes. Do you need security officers?

Voter eligibility: Need to develop voter lists. If those who check voter lists won't know everyone, how will voters identify themselves and be sure to only vote once? Print official ballots in a way they can't be copied (colored paper?)

If students have an opportunity to watch an election campaign in any country, they could write a short paper about their observations and make a prediction of whom they think will win.

Upcoming presidential elections in 2018

• Azerbaijan, April 11
• Montenegro, April 15
• Paraguay, April 22
• Venezuela, May 20
• Colombia, May 27
• Mexico, July 1
• Mali, July 29
• Bosnia and Herzegovina, October 7
• Brazil, October 7
• Afghanistan, October 20
• Madagascar, November 24
• Democratic Republic of the Congo, December 23

February's International Film Festival

One of the most pleasant ways to learn about a country is to go to a movie made in or about somewhere you don't live. When Oscar nominations for short and feature films are announced, it's time to start looking for theatres that show them, because many of these potential Academy Award winners have an international connection.

     This year, in the animated shorts category, South Africa presents Revolting Rhymes based on Ronald Dahl's dark spin on fairy tales. One French short, Negative Space, shows a sad relationship between father and son can exist in any culture, and, in another French short, two amphibians explore a deserted mansion. These shorts are shown together with two U.S. films: the Pixar short, Lou, that ran before Cars and Kobe Bryant's retirement letter, Dear Basketball.

     Since the live action shorts nominated for Oscars often portray news events, they can be a pleasant way to see both uplifting and unpleasant aspects of a country. Watu Wote (All of Us) shows how Muslims risked their lives to protect the Christians riding on a bus with them, when Islamic terrorists attacked in Kenya. The British short, The Silent Child, introduces the social worker who taught a deaf 4-year-old girl the sign language that enabled her to come out of the shadows and be included in family conversations. Two U.S. entries cover a school shooting in Atlanta titled DeKalb Elementary and My Nephew Emmett based on the 1955 racist murder of Emmett Till. Australian humor is on display in The Eleven O'Clock, a short about an appointment between a psychiatrist and patient that try to treat each other.

     Families already may have seen the animated feature, Coco, which has a Mexican theme depicting how a death in the family shouldn't end memories of a relative. Loving Vincent probably won't have wide distribution, but if young people have a chance to see this Polish-British feature, it might be their only time to see a movie where each frame about Vincent Van Gogh is made by an oil painting. Since Angelina Jolie produced The Breadwinner, this animated feature likely has wider distribution. It shows how an 11-year-old girl disguised herself as a boy to grow up with more opportunities under the Taliban in Afghanistan.

     Although too advanced to be appropriate or understood by young people, the live action foreign language films nominated for Academy Awards provide adults with points of view from Chile (A Fantastic Woman), Lebanon (The Insult), Russia (Loveless), Hungary (On Body and Soul), and Sweden (The Square).

     Oscar winners will be announced on Sunday, March 4, 2018.

     

   

Mixed Messages from Saudi Arabia

I like watching CNBC, because a station that follows the stock market has to keep up, not only with economics, but also with political and social trends. Following the U.S. presidential election, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, chairman and controlling shareholder of Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding Company and one of the largest foreign investors in the US, told CNBC host, Jim Cramer, "We look at you (your country) as being the vanguard and being the leaders of the world."

     Prince Alwaleed reminded me of the time I began teaching a section on Medieval Italy by asking students to list what they knew about Italy. Roman Empire, pizza, pasta, and home of the Pope helped initiate a discussion of how fragmented the country was before unification in 1870. Now, I asked myself, "What do I know about Saudi Arabia?" Lots of oil, little water, home of 9/11 terrorists, Muslim, women not allowed to drive, considers Iran an enemy. I need to know more.

     The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not formed until 1932. In the 1950s, the US participated in the country's oil boom through Aramco, the Arabian American Oil Company.  US heavy machinery companies also participated in the oil-financed construction boom that transformed a desert into a wealthy country with ports, roads, schools, hospitals, and power plants.

     Despite these close US-Saudi connections, some Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia, as well as those from the enemy Shi'ite branch of Muslims in Persian Iran, harbored hatred of the US for its support of Israel against the Palestinians and resented the US presence in Saudi Arabia. At present, Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen fire long-range missiles into Saudi Arabia.

     Although Osama bin Laden's family came from poor South Yemen, his father won favor with Saudi's king and gained lucrative construction contracts. Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia and spent most of his early life there in Jeddah. Due to the Muslim terrorist activities he inspired from his later headquarters in Sudan, including a suspected attempt on the life of Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, Saudi King Fahd was pressured to revoke bin Laden's citizenship and passport in March, 1994. He left Sudan for Afghanistan in May, 1996.

     Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US were Saudi nationals. Senior Saudi officials denied any role in the attacks and the 9/11 commission found no evidence linking the Saudi government with funding for the operation. Nonetheless, in September 2016, the US Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) that gives the families of terrorist victims the right to sue governments suspected of playing a role in a terrorist attack on US soil. Congress overrode President Obama's veto of the bill and JASTA became a law which potentially undermines the close US-Saudi relationship and counter terrorism cooperation between the two countries.

     In Saudi Arabia, cuts in salaries and subsidies due to falling oil prices are understandably unpopular with the Saudi public. Saudi's Vision 2030 economic program is designed to reduce the country's dependence on oil revenues. On CNBC, Prince Alwaleed told Cramer that he is a member of a group looking into energy alternatives to oil.

     Besides the importance of oil in Saudi Arabia's future economy, succession to the Saudi throne also bears watching. Currently, King Salman of the House of Saud supports both Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, his 57-year-old nephew and minister of interior who is next in the line of succession, and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 31-year-old contender who could leapfrog past his cousin. Speculation heightened when Crown Prince Muqrin bin Aldulaziz resigned his position in April, 2015, to make room for the Deputy Crown Prince.

Hot Topics Presidential Candidates Should Debate

Since tonight is the last presidential debate between the U.S. candidates for President, I turned to the Foreign Policy Association to see what Clinton and Trump should be discussing on TV today.
The topics the organization has selected for their Great Decisions program in 2017 are as follows:

• The Future of Europe
• Trade and Politics
• Conflict on the South China Sea
• Saudi Arabia in Transition
• U.S. Foreign Policy and Petroleum
• Latin America's Political Pendulum
• Prospects for Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Nuclear Security

Experts have written short summaries for each of these discussion topics at fpa.org. At the same site, you can sign up to receive Foreign Policy Association updates and to learn how to start a Great Decisions discussion group.

Looking back on the Foreign Policy Association's past discussion topics, such as the rise of ISIS, international migration, and Cuba and the United States, suggests this organization has useful insights on issues the world is likely to face in 2017.

Muslim Perspective: Conclusion of a 3-Part Series

What was the Muslim perspective after World War II? At first, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Yemen agreed with Britain's suggestion to form an Arab League to protect their independence from outside threats, especially from the Soviet Union. But a common opposition to the new Israeli state proved to be a stronger unifying force. Muslim countries that had no part in murdering Jewish prisoners in the Holocaust were unwilling to recognize Israeli independence. They responded with a declaration of war, when a UN resolution ended Britain's Palestinian Mandate and created the new state of Israel on May 15, 1948. The United States, with the largest concentration of Jewish people outside of Israel, went to the aid of Israel.

     After Mohammed's death, Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims took different directions and became bitter enemies (For an explanation of the rift, see the section, Mohammed's Legacy, in the earlier post, "This We Believe."). Both Muslim sects had splinter groups determined to annihilate Israel, and, by extension, Israel's ally, the United States. The new fundamentalist Shi'ite regime that took over in Iran in 1979 permitted militants to hold 62 Americans in the U.S. embassy for over a year. Israel viewed exiled Palestinian Sunnis and Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shia in Lebanon as terrorists. To rid its northern border of the threat posed by both groups, Israel supported the 1982 raid by Maronite Christian militias that resulted in a refugee camp massacre.

     Seen as an ally of the Israeli forces behind the 1982 raid, the United States became an Hezbollah target. After a suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into the U.S. embassy in Lebanon in April, 1983, Iran directed another suicide operation that killed 241 at the U.S.Marine barracks there in October. Tel Aviv, which had destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, pressured Washington to see that Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear bomb would not succeed.

     Only because of a blatant invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990 was President George H.W.Bush, with UN backing, able to assemble the international force that took just four days to defeat Iraq and liberate Kuwait. In other circumstances, the U.S. was a target in 1993 for Muslim terrorists who set off a bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center in New York and for the terrorists, trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, who bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. With a successful "business plan" in hand, the Muslim mastermind behind these attacks traveled to Sudan in 1995 to remind Osama bin Laden how effective suicide bombers could be against Americans. (For additional information about the Muslim perspective, see the earlier post, "Why Do They Hate Us?")



   

Diamond Flaws

President Obama will visit one kind of diamond, when he takes in a baseball game in Cuba this week.* And June brides have a many-faceted diamond on their ring fingers. For the independent miners paying the violent armed groups who control access to the rivers in the Central African Republic (CAR), the diamonds they find represent a treacherous way to scrape out a living.

     These miners are far removed from those who wear the diamonds and gold found in the CAR, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Angola, and Mexico and the precious stones from Afghanistan and Myanmar (Burma) and from those who rely on the mobile phones, cars, computers, and other products that contain tungsten from Colombia and tantalum, tungsten, and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before these raw materials become part of finished products, they change hands often in secretive and poorly regulated supply chains that span the globe.

     The UN, OECD, US, and EU all are taking measures to pressure companies to ask their mineral suppliers more questions and to notice warning signs. Berne Declaration, a Swiss non-governmental organization (NGO), knew Togo produced little or no gold, yet Swiss companies thought they were buying gold that originated there. Instead, their gold was coming from Burkina Faso. True to its advertising, De Beers is assuring consumers "a diamond is forever" by launching a pilot program to buy diamond jewelry and loose diamonds for resale, thereby reducing the need to buy new diamonds from unknown sources.

     Not only is there growing concern about the human rights abuses associated with the dangers independent miners face, but conflict in the world's poorest countries relies in part on financing from selling licenses to miners, collecting tolls on transportation routes to the mines, taxes, and mineral sales. In Zimbabwe, even the national security forces and secret police supplement their government budgets and escape government oversight by engaging in the mineral trade.

     There are money and jobs enough in the mineral trade for both miners and manufacturers to benefit by behaving responsibly.

*See the earlier post, "Good News from Cuba," for background on President Obama's trip to Cuba.

The Continuing Struggle between Good and Evil

Kayla Mueller's message of hope after she was kidnapped in Syria in 2013, like that of Anne Frank, and the story of Kayla's life, like the life stories of Nelson Mandela and Maximilian Kolbe, will live on long after ISIS is, at most, a footnote of history. But that is not to minimize the horror of Kayla's 18-month captivity. As a hostage, she was the slave property of ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Because she feared her American appearance would lead to their recapture, she refused to escape with non- Western female captives and was killed in an air strike in February, 2015.

     Coupled with news that Shiite attacks on government buildings in Yemen's capital have caused the US, UK, and France to close their Embassies is the regret Yemen's Muslim women have since they are no longer allowed to wear the colorful veils that used to identify their home villages. Shrouded in black veils, women are no longer free to express any individuality in public. Few remember when no women covered their faces 30 years ago and how, at the sea, some even wore colorful two-piece outfits with long skirts, bare midriffs, and tops with sleeves.

     Taliban captors in February, 2015 released Father Alexis Prem Kumar, who had been serving as director of Jesuit refugee services in Afghanistan when he was abducted. Despite violence and turmoil, women at the ARZU (the Dari word for "hope") Hope Studio, founded in the Bamyan region of Afghanistan in 2004, have continued to come together to carry on the weaving tradition that has produced lush rugs for centuries. Located in central Afghanistan, Bamyan's arts and architecture have been influenced by diverse Greek, Persian, Turkish, Indian, and Chinese cultures. In 2001, however, it was the site of the Taliban's destruction of three monumental Buddhist sculptures carved into a mountain in the fifth century. Yet, women at the ARZU Hope Studio persevere, incorporating wartime imagery and biblical verses into their woven panels, earning an income, maintaining a community garden, and funding a preschool, health care, and community centers.

     Boko Haram finds it unnecessary to recruit followers. Like their earlier abduction of more than 200 young women in Nigeria, the group continues to TAKE girls and women as wives, cooks, and suicide bombers and young men and boys as soldiers. These little soldiers will be facing about 300 former soldiers from the South African Defense Force who, according to the Financial Times (March 27, 2015), have gone to Nigeria to fight terrorists.

(The earlier blog post, "Hope for the Future," mentions some of the successes that help remind us past problems have been solved.)

 

See the World in Oscar-Nominated Films

In 2016, Oscars continued to honor a variety of countries at the Academy Awards ceremony on February 28. I'll just name the countries of those I remember who were involved in honored films: Mexico, Chile, Hungary, Israel, Italy, the UK, and Pakistan.

     Before the Academy Awards presentations on February 22, 2015, movie theatres began to show the Live Action and Animated Shorts nominated for Oscars. Last year these shorts gave kids a chance to see life in foreign countries.

     "Butter Lamp" showed the reactions of Tibetan nomads as they had their pictures taken, not by selfies, but by a professional photographer who provided various backdrops showing sites in China.

     "Boogaloo and Graham" captured the reactions of a mother and two boys in Northern Ireland who took care of the chicks their father gave them during the Troubles.

     In "Parvaneh" (a Persian name meaning "Butterfly"), when an Afghan girl seeking asylum in Switzerland enlisted the aid of a local girl, Emely, to help her send money to her family, she encountered lots of red tape and learned girls in different countries with very different lifestyles can be friends.

     A live action short, "My Father's Truck," that didn't quite make the cut to receive an Oscar nomination, showed how family members can live very different lives. When a girl in Vietnam skipped school one day, she found out her life as a school girl was a lot easier than what her father did transporting passengers in his truck. The Chinese father in "Carry On," a film also on a short list of possible Oscar-nominated movies, sacrificed his life to save his family during the Japanese invasion in World War II.

     Some films might show how kids in other countries experience the same things as they do.

     One child's parents can be very different from another child's, as a Norwegian 7-year-old-girl and her sisters learn when they request a bicycle from their hippie parents in "Me and My Moulton," an animated short nominated for an Oscar.

     "Baghdad Messi," a live action short considered for an Oscar, showed how kids in Iraq, even those with only one leg, love soccer as much as kids in other countries.

     "Summer Vacation," an Israeli short considered for an Oscar, may remind kids that every family vacation to a beautiful beach doesn't always go as planned.

     And "Symphony No. 42," an animated short from Hungary that was considered for an Oscar, even notices the similarities between the activities that humans and animals perform. Music in this film includes bird and jungle sounds from Sri Lanka.

     Considering the full-length, Oscar-nominated, foreign language films from Poland (Ida), Russia (Leviathan), Estonia (Tangerines), Mauritania (Timbuktu), and Argentina (Wild Tales), making and viewing movies are popular activities all over the world.



   

Girl Power?

Lured by the romance of joining the "jihadi girl power subculture," young tech-savvy Western women are developing contacts with ISIS terrorists, just like the Latin Queens who have been drawn to the gang of Latin Kings. The question is: Are women who join terrorist groups and gangs exhibiting girl power or their willingness to become tools of male power? Are terrorist groups grooming women to use their quick reflexes to detonate car bombs, their devotion to become suicide bombers, or their feminine wiles to return to their home countries to attack targets determined by men?

      Female Kurdish soldiers also have taken up arms against ISIS. Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned Marxist leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has long fought a war for independence from Turkey, recognized how his support for gender equality would help enlist women who understand ISIS's intention to restrict the rights of women.

 Girl power is seen in other forms by the following women:

• Malala Yousafzai The Pakistani girl who recovered from being shot in the head by the Taliban and went onto win a Nobel Peace Prize for supporting the education of women throughout the world  In 2015, Time magazine named her one of the "100 Most Influential People." Her story is told in the book, I Am Malala.
• Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe This nun from the order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, recognized as one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" in 2014,  ministers to the girls abducted and raped by soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army in Southern Sudan and Uganda. At the Saint Monica Vocational School in Gulu, Uganda, these girls learn to grow their own food, make their own clothes, tenderly care for their children, and sew the purses and other items they sell to support themselves and their families. Profits from the book, Sewing Hope, the story of Sister Rosemary, support her work.

Also, consider the three women that National Geographic has identified as "Emerging Explorers."

• Mantza Morales Casanova When this Mexican woman saw children harming animals and plants, she decided to form Humanity United to Nature in Harmony for Beauty (HUNAB), an organization determined: 1) to put education about the environment into schools, 2) create Ceiba Petandra Park, a free area where 64,000 children can have an interactive learning experience about climate change, wetland conservation, wildlife protection, and pollution, and 3) to provide the education that children need to become environmental leaders who change the world.
• Shivani Bhalla Determined to save Kenya's lions, she founded: 1) Lions Kids Camp, where children often see lions in the wild for the first time, and 2) Ewaso Lions, a community outreach program designed to give tribal warriors, women, and children reasons to embrace conservation and to respect and coexist with lions.
• Shabana Basij-Rasikh At a risk to her own life and theirs, her parents sent her to a school in Afghanistan, where she excelled and went on to earn a degree from Middlebury College in the United States. To prepare other girls to attend universities abroad, she co-founded the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, a boarding school for girls. She has said, "The most effective antidote to the Taliban is to create the best educated leadership generation in Afghanistan's history. Our girls of today - the women of tomorrow - will make it happen."

Travel the World with Summer Reading

When school's out, most children no longer have to spend their summers working on a farm. There is plenty of time to read on rainy days, in the shade of a tree, and during the hour wait before swimming after lunch. To do some reading that has a global dimension, with or without the help of adults, kids can dive into the following books.

• Among the 31 stories in The White Sail, youngsters who are learning to read will find Viking and sea adventures.
• By reading The Curse of Captain LaFook,  children in middle school can return to the time when the Caribbean teamed with pirates, buried treasure, and a curse.
• The Open Ocean by Francesco Pittau takes kids under the sea for a guessing game and education about marine life.
• With Madeline, young girls can visit Paris in Madeline and the Old House in Paris.
• In We All Went on Safari by Laurie Krebs, animals in Tanzania's Serengeti Plain help children 5 to 8 years old count to ten and learn some Swahili. Youngsters who read this book also will learn about Tanzania and the Masai people who live there.
• Like We All Went on Safari, The Rumor has wonderful illustrations that will appeal to younger children. Storytellers in the Sahyadri Mountains of India's Western Ghats repeat tall tales like the one Anushka Ravishankar tells in The Rumor.
• In Kids in Kabul: Living Bravely Through a Never-Ending War, Reborah Ellis introduces kids in grades 5 through 12 to young women who want to be educated in Afghanistan. An older woman tells how she once brought an electric bill, instead of her doctor's prescription, to a pharmacy, because she never learned to read.
• Kids in Afghanistan go from a carefree childhood to tragedy in The Kite Runner, which also is a movie.
• Crossing the Wire introduces young people to immigration concerns when 15-year-old Victor Flores attempts to flee Mexico in an effort to support his family by finding a job in the United States.
• On a bright summer day, older children may be ready to deal with some of the world's upheavals by reading The Diary of Anne Frank or Red Scarf Girl, Ji Li Jiang's account of growing up during China's Cultural Revolution.
• Students can travel the world in Lonely Planet's Not for Parents Travel Book, a collection of short descriptions of places in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Lonely Planet also publishes separate Not for Parents books on London, Paris, Rome, China, Australia, and Great Britain.
• Reading can lead to action with the help of A Kids' Guide to Climate Change and Global Warming. Besides presenting facts about climate change, this book suggests service projects kids can do to improve the world's environment.
• With the help of illustrations by Anne Wilson, Dawn Casey couples stories from around the world with related activities in The Barefoot Book of Earth Tales. Besides becoming familiar with stories told in places such as Australia, Nigeria, and Wales, children will come away from this book knowing how to grow tomatoes and how to make a pine cone bird feeder, corn husk doll, and other items.
• Every year there is a new World Almanac for Kids that provides page after page of interesting facts about animals, movies, sports, science, and other fascinating subjects. 

This is just the beginning of a summer reading list. Your local library has lots of other suggestions.
At scholastic.com/summer, Scholastic invites teachers and parents to help kids log in their number of summer reading minutes in order to win digital prizes. If a school sets a record for the most reading minutes in the world, its name will be published in the 2014 Scholastic Book of World Records.

Hope for the Future

When we hear that terrorist groups have attacked tourists in Tunisia, burned a Jordanian pilot to death, or killed journalists in Paris, it is well to remember, not only other losses, but also bright victories.

     Children look forward to their birthdays, trips to the playground, and new pets. When they begin to discover the world, with all its pluses and minuses, they have more to anticipate, and they expand their opportunities for potential happiness. They might make friends with foreign pen pals, save to travel abroad, raise enough walkathon money to buy a cow for a family in Vietnam, rejoice when a political prisoner is set free, or help a nation survive a natural disaster. Some day they even could come up with inventions to improve the lives of impoverished families, just like Marcin Jakubowski and Gabriele Diamanti did. For posting a free tractor design, budget, and instructional video online and designing the Eliodomestico solar powered water distiller, Time magazine credited these inventors with two of the 25 best inventions of 2012.

     There have been many reasons to celebrate in the recent past. What an exciting day it was in 1990, when South Africa's heroic leader, Nelson Mandela, was released from Robben Island after 27 years in prison! Again in 2008, how thrilling it was when a daring rescue freed Ingrid Betancourt, former presidential candidate, from the guerrilla group who had held her captive in Colombia's jungle for six years! And, what rejoicing there was in 2010, when 33 Chilean miners who were thought lost were successfully rescued after spending 69 days underground. Again in 2010, supporters in Burma had reason to cheer when the country's repressive military regime released opposition leader and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest. In 2015 her party would win the first civilian majority in parliament in 50 years, and, in 2016, her aide, Htin Kyaw, would be elected the first civilian President in over 50 years.  Joy erupted in 2011, when China released Ai Weiwei, the artist/activist who dared to criticize the country's Communist Party on Twitter. Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer China imprisoned for helping women forced to have abortions, was freed in 2012 and is now living in the United States. Malala, the Pakistani girl shot in the head for espousing education for females, not only recovered but won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. By year end, 2014 also saw the release of U.S. AID worker, Alan Gross, in Cuba and the restoration of U.S.-Cuban relations, as well as North Korea's release of Kenneth Bae and two other Americans. Three other Americans were released from North Korea prior to a summit between Kim Jong Un and President Trump in 2018. In February, 2015, India announced that Taliban captors had released Father Alexis Prem Kumar, who had been serving as director of Jesuit refugee services in Afghanistan when he was abducted. And the Ebola virus stopped spreading in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. Four US citizens were released from prison in Iran in 2016, and, in August, 2016, a cease fire in Colombia marked the beginning of the end of a fifty year battle between government troops and the Marxist guerrillas known as FARC. In Venezuela, the Holts, who were arrested on fabricated weapons charges after an American man married a Venezuelan woman, gained freedom in May, 2018 thanks to the negotiations by a U.S. delegation that included Senator Bob Corker from Tennessee and Senator Orin Hatch from Mr. Holt's home state of Utah.

      Indeed, it took eight years, but in 2014 five men finally were convicted in Russia for killing outspoken human rights activist and journalist, Anna Politkovskaya (See more details about those charged with her murder at the later blog post, "Hearing Voices from Mexico and Russia."). Nine years after two assassins used Polonium-210 to kill Alexander Litvinenko, former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB is a successor to the KGB) officer turned critic of Putin's corruption and MI6 source after he escaped to Britain in 2000, London's high court laid out the details of its Metropolitan police investigation. Results of an inquiry will be disclosed by the end of 2015. Since about 97% of all polonium, which is a silent, invisible, normally unidentifiable agent of death, is produced at a Russian nuclear site, Litvinenko's murder appears linked to Russia, and possibly Putin's connection to Russia's biggest organized crime syndicate. Two later Russian attempts to poison enemies failed. Former military spy, Sergei Skripal, left the hospital in late May, 2018. Finally, it has taken three decades, but Pyongyang agreed in July, 2014, to investigate the disappearance of Japanese nationals missing in North Korea.

      There is hope that joy will erupt again some day, when all of the 276 female students Boko Haram kidnapped in Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014 are released (82 were exchanged for six of the terrorist group's imprisoned members in May, 2017, and more were released in 2018.). There will be other causes for joy when  Russia overturns the three and a half year sentence of Oleg Navalny, the younger brother of anti-government blogger, Alexei, who was given house arrest after his three and a half year prison term for fraud was suspended (Alexei removed his ankle monitoring device, continues to walk around Moscow like a free man, and inspired an anti-corruption protest march on March 26, 2017; he again was arrested and released after another rally in July.); Syria and the ISIS terrorist group send captives home alive; Hamas and Israel reach an agreement that frees an Israeli soldier; North Korea ends its threats of a nuclear missile attack on the U.S. and overturns the ruling that sentenced US college student, Otto Warmbler, to 15 years of hard labor (Warmbler was sent home in a coma and died in June, 2017). China has yet to release human rights lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, or cancel the prison sentences of dissidents, Xu Zhiyong and Liu Xiaobo (diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and died in July, 2017), a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement and winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Liu Xiaobo's widow, Liu Xia, was released from house arrest in 2018 and allowed to go into exile in Germany. Some day peace will come to Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen the way it emerged from conflict in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. To prevent future tragedies, we also can hope that much will be learned from the U.S. drone attack on an al-Qaeda compound in January, 2015 that inadvertently killed Italian humanitarian worker, Giovanni Lo Porto, and Dr. Warren Weinstein, a U.S. A.I.D. contractor captured when his guards were overcome while they were eating breakfast in Pakistan.

     Speaking at a 2008 conference on health and national development sponsored by the Association on Third World Affairs, Albert Santoli, president of the nongovernmental organization (NGO), Asia America Initiative, told how he, as a non-Muslim working among an almost completely Muslim population in the Sulu Archipelago, the tri-border area of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, was adopted by the largest guerrilla band. The medicine his organization provided cured the leader's daughter of malaria. When Muslims heard that help was coming from people who did not know them, including Christian colleges, they were shocked, said Santoli. "Whoever needs help gets help and that opens up doors and it builds bridges," he said.

Children can help

In her book, How to be an Everyday Philanthropist: 330 Ways to Make a Difference in Your Home, Community, and World--At No Cost, Nicole Bouchard Boles seized on the notion that those who want to help need to find small ways to start. Since nongovernmental organizations already have begun to unravel world problems, either individually or collectively as students in school, scouting, and other youth groups, children can participate in ongoing NGO projects. Local Rotary Clubs, for example, may need help packing the ShelterBoxes Tom Henderson developed to provide the supplies people need after floods, earthquakes, and other international disasters. The website, charitynavigator.org, is among those that help identify organizations most worthy of support.

     By now, many youngsters have gone Trick-or-Treating for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), while they collected Halloween candy for themselves. What they may not know is that they can take credit for raising funds that have provided immunizations, vitamins, antibiotics, food, clean water, and education to help the world's poorest children get a good start in life in 190 countries and territories. Information about where to pick up and return UNICEF collection boxes is available at the website, trickortreatforunicef.org, or by calling 1-800-FOR-KIDS. Should schools and organizations be looking worthy projects, they might consider raising funds to buy mosquito nets, blankets, or water wells through UNICEF's "Inspired Gifts Program." Information about this program is available by calling 1-866-237-2224 or by visiting inspiredgifts.org.

     Operation International Children, launched originally as Operation Iraqi Children in 2004, is another project directly related to students. Promoted by actor Gary Sinise, the organization was founded by U.S. soldiers who distribute kits containing pencils, rulers, crayons, notebook paper, and other school supplies in war torn areas. Information about how to get involved with this program is available at the operationinternationalchildren.com website.

     Learning that a Ugandan coffee farmer earns 66 cents for every $100 a coffee consumer spends in a developed country's grocery store could inspire a student to facilitate direct distribution to consumers. If students can arrange to have their schools or other community groups host a sale, the nonprofit organization, SERRV, can supply coffee and chocolate from their farmer partners, as well as individually made, handcrafted items from artisans, around the world. To obtain an information packet, visit serrv.org/SERRVOurWorld or call 1-800-423-0071.

     Heifer International taps into children's love of animals. Instead of bringing gifts to a birthday party, one mother asked young partygoers to bring donations for Heifer International that would provide impoverished families with dairy cows, pigs, chicks, ducks, goats, sheep, and bees. To raise money for Heifer, one 13-year-old girl in North Carolina makes jewelry and sells her creations at craft fairs, the public library, churches, and other venues. Her efforts have raised over $10,000. The Heifer International brochures and heifer.org website picture the happy young recipients who have received and are learning to care for the animal gifts funds provide. Since aided families pass on each animal's offspring to other families, children who make donations to Heifer International are part of an endless chain devoted to eliminating world hunger and poverty.

     For over 50 years, Amnesty International has made sure the names of political prisoners, such as those mentioned above, are not forgotten. The Chinese proverb, "It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness" inspires the letter writing campaigns and human rights defenders that provide hope that freedom of speech can become a universal human right. When learning that someone has been imprisoned for speaking out, adults can help students write to their government leaders to ask them to initiate diplomatic contact that will help free these victims. In the US, students also can find the addresses of the US Embassies of foreign countries in A World Almanac and send letters over and over again to the offending country asking for the prisoner's freedom.

     Entrepreneurial children who line up neighbors willing to pay for lawn mowing, snow shoveling, baby sitting, and dog walking are the perfect prospects to develop the creative ideas and activities needed to remedy festering global ills. Proactive youngsters will find outlets for their energy in sister city events related to international issues. In Madison, Wisconsin, for example, young people learned that after East Timor (now Timor-Leste) gained independence from Indonesia in 2002, it lost much, when the departing military and militias burnt homes, schools, and hospitals. these young people then rode their bikes in "Tour de Timor," which publicized the plight of sister city, Ainaro.

     Like cities with sister cities, churches often send youth delegations to help with projects in sister parishes. When the young travelers return, they multiply the effect of their visits by inviting congregations to hear their informative presentations. Since religions cross national boundaries, churches often are active on the international scene in other ways. Their affiliated youth groups can participate in good works, such as those performed by the Quakers Friends' Service Committee and the Lutheran World Relief program that provides quilts and layettes to babies in Africa.

Models and motivation

Technology savvy youngsters can find models among the experts who saw natural disasters, medical emergencies, poor educational opportunities, dangerous kerosene lamps, and a lack of information about product markets as problems that could be solved by computers, satellite access, solar panels, and cell phones. Engineers already have come up with ways to aid farmers in lesser developed countries with low-tech, hand-cranked, foot-pedaled, and bicycle-powered radios, water pumps, oil seed presses, and laptop computers. For example, an African entrepreneur invented a playground merry-go-round that South African students turn to pump clean water for Boikarabelo, their village outside Johannesburg.

      To encourage students to create technological solutions to the world's toughest problems, Microsoft sponsors the Imagine Cup for high school and college students 16 years and older. Find details at imaginecup.com, and aim to compete in the World Wide Finals. One Billion Minds, a program similar to the Imagine Cup, was founded in 2007 by Sanjukt K. Saha. He plans to motivate a billion minds to use science, technology, design, and social innovation to solve problems in the emerging world. To date, graduates from 180 universities in 103 countries have gone to the onebillionminds.com website to find out how they can participate in this program as Challengers or Solvers. Each year, Hult International Business School, with five campuses in the U.S., U.K.,China, and the UAE, challenges teams of university students to solve global social problems posed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The winning team and NGO partners then receive $1 million to launch their solution. Find competition details at hultglobalcasechallenge.com.

     Nobel Prize winners listed on the nobelpeaceprize.org website also can inspire children to serve the global community in other ways. Young girls can derive inspiration from women such as Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who won the prize in 2004 for mobilizing a campaign to fight global warming by planting trees. Like the three women who were honored in 2011 for their efforts on behalf of women's rights, they too can identify and work to correct discrimination against women. Tawakkui Karman, the first Arab woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, exemplifies how anti-government protests, like the Arab Spring revolution she helped lead in Yemen, are only democratic when they recognize women's equality. The two Liberian honorees, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee, showed how women, including Christian and Muslim women, can work together to end wars and attacks on them by men.

     Nobel Prize winners also can start young people thinking about ways to alleviate the world's physical and economic suffering. Frenchman Bernard Kouchner saw the need to minister to those injured in war torn areas and pulled together the international group of medical volunteers who won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize for "Doctors Without Borders." In 2006, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh was honored for founding the Grameen Bank, a financial institution that provides microsized loans to small businesses, often owned by women, in less developed countries. Following in his footsteps, Nancy Barry, president of Women's World Banking, has loaned 18 million poor women $10 to $10,000 each to start their own businesses. Through kiva.org, students can make their own $25 microloans to small overseas entrepreneurs, farmers, or students who lack tuition funds. In The International Book of Bob, you can read about Bob Harris' visits with those who run Kiva-financed projects.

      Since 2003, every year TIME magazine has published an issue devoted to "The 100 Most Influential People in the World." Students can read through the short biographies of titans, leaders, artists, pioneers, and icons to find a place in the world where they could do the most good.

     Those who have witnessed world suffering can inspire young people to action. For Nathaniel Wright, the talk Sudanese Catholic Bishop Macram Max Gassis gave on genocide in the Darfur area of the Sudan was more than another class lecture. It motivated him to form STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur), a national student movement designed to raise awareness of the refugees suffering in Darfur, Sudan, and to provide the education and rehabilitation needed to improve their lives. His website, standnow.org, joins savedarfur.org as a resource children can check to find information about benefit events for Darfur as well as dates for fasts and protests. Recognized by Reebok as the first recipient of its Human Rights Young Activist Award, Wright has gone on to become an analyst in the Office of Congressional Ethics at the U.S. House of Representatives.

     Although many global problems remain, there have been successes besides those already mentioned: apartheid has ended in South Africa, the Berlin Wall no longer exists, and Germany has been reunited. Some of those who thought they could get away with committing human atrocities have been indicted and prosecuted by international and domestic courts. There is hope and happiness in the future. Both fill the hearts of the children who will become future world leaders.