No struggle for human rights around the world is ever complete. The record that I began in the earlier post, "Hope for the Future," needs to be updated with some positive and negative developments.
Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered by a military death squad in 1980 because he spoke out for unions and poor peasant groups against the grip of prosperous coffee growers and capitalism in El Salvador, was declared a saint of the Catholic Church in 2018.
Vietnam released and exiled "Mother Mushroom," Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who had been jailed for writing about the country's corruption and pollution.
Boko Haram continues to kill and kidnap innocent victims in Nigeria and the Cameroon.
North Korea has re-education camps for thousands, and China also holds Muslim Uighurs in camps because their religion is said to undermine peace and security. In March, 2019, Kazakhstan would demonstrate an effort to maintain good relations with its Chinese neighbor by arresting Serikzhan Bilash for supporting Uighurs detained in Xinjiang's camps.
Russia tried unsuccessfully to poison a spy in the UK in 2018, and it continues to hold political prisoners, such as Oleg Sentsov and Oleg and Alexei Navalny. In February, 2019, Russia would arrest Michael Calvey, a U.S financier, which is reminiscent of the expulsion of Browder, whose tax expert, sometimes called his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian prison.
For criticizing the regime of King Salman and his son, Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi Arabian journalist and US resident, Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Turkey in October, 2018, but in the same month, a Turkish court released a US pastor, Andrew Brunson, who had been in prison there on false terrorism charges for two years.
Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Students Share Foreign Experiences without Leaving Home
A mother in India, who only completed the 7th grade, said her daughter and son were in school, because she could embroider pillows to make money to send them to elementary school. How different that is, I thought, from most of the mothers in the United States who are well educated and do not have to pay to send their children to school. Yet, their children probably have similar experiences learning to read, to add and subtract, and to join playmates in games at recess.
In the picture book, Mirror, by Jeanne Baker, city boys in Australia and farm boys in Morocco learn their lives are both similar and different. The earlier post, "Getting to Know You," tells how "Arthur," on his PBS show, learned a boy in Turkey did not live in a tent and ride to school on a camel. They both did a lot of the same things.
It would be interesting and fun to ask students of all ages to describe the lives of children in France and China. How do they dress? What do they eat? How do they get to school? What games do they play? Then, it would be a challenge to find out if their ideas were correct. One resource that might help is epals.com.
Once teachers sign up on epals.com, they can select countries, the ages of interested students from 3 to 19, what language to use, and even the size of classes. Their students can connect with classrooms in other countries to work on shared projects and begin pen pal exchanges.
Contacts with foreign students prevent mistakes like a student of mine once made, when she asked a student from South Africa, if she had ever used a computer.
In the picture book, Mirror, by Jeanne Baker, city boys in Australia and farm boys in Morocco learn their lives are both similar and different. The earlier post, "Getting to Know You," tells how "Arthur," on his PBS show, learned a boy in Turkey did not live in a tent and ride to school on a camel. They both did a lot of the same things.
It would be interesting and fun to ask students of all ages to describe the lives of children in France and China. How do they dress? What do they eat? How do they get to school? What games do they play? Then, it would be a challenge to find out if their ideas were correct. One resource that might help is epals.com.
Once teachers sign up on epals.com, they can select countries, the ages of interested students from 3 to 19, what language to use, and even the size of classes. Their students can connect with classrooms in other countries to work on shared projects and begin pen pal exchanges.
Contacts with foreign students prevent mistakes like a student of mine once made, when she asked a student from South Africa, if she had ever used a computer.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Flying Can Be Fun Again
Some airline passengers in the Caribbean, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates, according to trendwatching.com, can begin to anticipate the glamorous experience flying was in years gone by. In Turkey, they'll also meet a new friend, Nely.
Vacationers touring in Barbados with Virgin Holidays will be able to put their casual flying clothes over their bathing suits and check out of their resort hotels early, because Virgin will pick them up, check their luggage, and take them to the beach. At oceanside, Virgin will provide boarding passes, a locker, beach towels, a showering facility, unlimited refreshments, and an air conditioned lounge area, while every last vacation moment merits a "Wish You Were Here" selfie home.
Visitors to Singapore's Changi Airport have walked among animatronic, remote-controlled butterflies designed to resemble the Diaethria Anna species. For kids, the airport's five-story playground offers climbing nets, a pole to slide down, and more for use for 50 at a time.
Before heading into the wild blue yonder from Dubai International Airport, passengers will be exploring the virtual blue aquarium surrounding them as they walk through a security tunnel to their flights in Terminal 3. To use the tunnel instead of traditional procedures, passengers pre-register at 3D face-scanning kiosks located throughout the airport. Watching the fish is expected to relax and entertain passengers as 80 hidden tunnel cameras scan visitors' faces from different angles. At the end of the tunnel, cleared travelers are sent on their way with a "Have a nice trip" message or a red sign alerts security. Dubai's airports process 80 million passengers now. The tunnel was developed to handle the increased volume of passengers, 124 million, expected by 2020. It should be mentioned that Dubai's virtual aquarium receives the same legal challenges that other facial recognition systems face.
At Turkey's Istanbul New Airport, a robot named Nely notes the expressions, ages, and genders of passengers before greeting them and making (or not making) small talk. Nely is, of course, travel-functional: booking flights for passengers, relaying information, and providing weather updates. Using AI, facial recognition, emotional analysis based on input from sociologists, voice capability, and a bar code reader, Nely even remembers passengers from previous interactions.
Vacationers touring in Barbados with Virgin Holidays will be able to put their casual flying clothes over their bathing suits and check out of their resort hotels early, because Virgin will pick them up, check their luggage, and take them to the beach. At oceanside, Virgin will provide boarding passes, a locker, beach towels, a showering facility, unlimited refreshments, and an air conditioned lounge area, while every last vacation moment merits a "Wish You Were Here" selfie home.
Visitors to Singapore's Changi Airport have walked among animatronic, remote-controlled butterflies designed to resemble the Diaethria Anna species. For kids, the airport's five-story playground offers climbing nets, a pole to slide down, and more for use for 50 at a time.
Before heading into the wild blue yonder from Dubai International Airport, passengers will be exploring the virtual blue aquarium surrounding them as they walk through a security tunnel to their flights in Terminal 3. To use the tunnel instead of traditional procedures, passengers pre-register at 3D face-scanning kiosks located throughout the airport. Watching the fish is expected to relax and entertain passengers as 80 hidden tunnel cameras scan visitors' faces from different angles. At the end of the tunnel, cleared travelers are sent on their way with a "Have a nice trip" message or a red sign alerts security. Dubai's airports process 80 million passengers now. The tunnel was developed to handle the increased volume of passengers, 124 million, expected by 2020. It should be mentioned that Dubai's virtual aquarium receives the same legal challenges that other facial recognition systems face.
At Turkey's Istanbul New Airport, a robot named Nely notes the expressions, ages, and genders of passengers before greeting them and making (or not making) small talk. Nely is, of course, travel-functional: booking flights for passengers, relaying information, and providing weather updates. Using AI, facial recognition, emotional analysis based on input from sociologists, voice capability, and a bar code reader, Nely even remembers passengers from previous interactions.
Friday, December 15, 2017
"Don't Give Up On Us...."
Perhaps the key to never giving up on democracy is believing it is not a sure thing, but, as the demonstrations in Iran suggested on New Year's Eve, 2017, neither is democracy's defeat a done deal.
Since 1961, Amnesty International has been keeping track of those subjected to human rights violations. If you have as few as five minutes to help alleviate suffering, go to amnestyusa.org and find out what you can do.
U.S. citizen Joshua Holt, a former Mormon missionary charged with spying, and his wife were arrested in Venezuela in June, 2016 when guns were planted in their apartment. U.S. citizen Alan Gross could tell them political conditions can change for the better. He was released in Cuba in 2014, when relations between the two countries improved. Mr. Holt and his wife were released in 2018.
St. Andrew Dung-Lac and his companions were martyred trying to convince North Koreans of their worth before God, but the current regime could not kill Oh Chung-Sung, the North Korean soldier who was seriously wounded when he ran to freedom across the border in November, 2017. The long tapeworms, tuberculosis, and hepatitus B his South Korean doctor found in the 24-year-old soldier tell how wounded North Korea's army already is.
China feels the need to prevent engineers building railroads in Africa from having any local contacts and to control internet access by its citizens at home. Nobel Peace Prize poet, Liu Xiaobo, and his wife had to be confined to their home to keep his pro-democracy works from inciting the public. But a year after Mr. Liu died, his widow, Liu Xia, was released and allowed to go into exile in Germany.
Hong Kong's young pro-democracy activists, who carried on knowing they faced repeated arrests after leading a 2014 protest, triumphed when an appeals court overturned their sentences in February, 2018. Despite the threat of receiving a prison term of up to three years, Hong Kong soccer fans bravely turned their backs on the playing of China's nation anthem, "March of the Volunteers," in October, 2017. Hong Kong protests that began in early June, 2019, aimed to eliminate the threat of transferring domestic criminals to the China mainland for trial. As demonstrations continued into August, both demands for democratic reforms and police intervention increased. China's slowing economy already raises Beijing's fear of an inability to control mainland dissatisfaction with a declining standard of living and seems to restrain the Xi government from further aggravating conditions by using military force against its citizens in Hong Kong. Unknown is how much broadcast and social media coverage of the Hong Kong protests reaches the restive Tibetan and Muslim populations in western China and what impact the news might be having.
In Russia, Putin's prosecutors have to rely on bogus accusations to keep the Navalny brothers, Oleg and Alexei, from running for President and using social media to mount anti-corruption proptest marches, not only in Moscow, but throughout Russia. Communist politicians lost elections in 2018, when Russia's senior citizens began protesting Putin's plan to raise the age when they could retire and claim pensions. In TIME magazine (the May 1/May 8, 2017 issue), former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said, "I am convinced Russia can succeed only through democracy."
Classic World War II Christmas carols retain their meaning during this holiday season. We think about the spread of democracy and sing, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas...Next year all our troubles will be miles away...Some day soon we all will be together, if the fates allow."
Friday, December 30, 2016
New Year's Resolution for Dictators
President-elect, Adama Barrow, who ended the 22-year reign of Yahya Jammeh in The Gambia, said colonists handed over executive power peacefully, so we should be able to show our children (an even) better example.
Yahya Jammeh and Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had an opportunity to follow the model of Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria, but instead they have clung to power like Mobuto Sese Seko and Robert Mugabe.
Ahead of Iran's scheduled May 19, 2017, election, Supreme Leader Ayatolla Ali Khamenei, who heads what has been called a "clerical dictatorship," began helping the radical opposition led by Ebrahim Raisi, by criticizing the lack of economic improvement current President Hassan Rouhani promised the country when the nuclear deal was ratified. Nonetheless Rouhani won in a landslide. The public continues to resent Iran's jailing of opposition leaders, banning of newspapers, and cancellation of concerts. Business leaders come to Iran looking for opportunities but leave when they consider the political climate.
In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a "Muslim democrat," when he gained power in 2001, but as the winner of a constitutional referendum in 2017, he claimed authoritarian powers unknown in the years after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded a secular republic.
Conditions are similar in the Congo, where President Kabila's Republican Guards arrested opposition leader, Frank Diongo, and the popular opposition leader, Moise Katumbi, who owns a successful soccer club. Etienne Tshisekedi, opposition leader of the Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress party died at 83 in February, 2017. Despite being known as a country rich in minerals, poverty, inflation, a lack of jobs, corruption, and crime plague the economy. Social media is cut off. Although the Constitution bans presidents from seeking a third term, Kabila's second 5-year term as president ended December 19, 2016, without plans for a new election until possibly 2018.
In The Gambia, President Yahya Jammeh, a Muslim who came to power as an army lieutenant in 1994, at first accepted defeat in the country's December 5, 2016, election. He then decided to contest the results before his term expired January 19, 2017. When a coalition of West African countries threatened to use military force to oust him, Jammeh left Gambia on January 21, 2017.
Adama Barrow, the victor in The Gambia's December election delivered a Christmas message calling for "peace and tranquility." In contrast to Jammeh's condemnation of homosexuality and gay rights, Barrow promised to "protect the right of each Gambian to hold and practice the religion or creed of one's choice without any hindrance or discrimination." From the beginning of his presidency in 2011, Jammeh was criticized for his repression and intimidation of the opposition. Media criticism was met with death threats to and arrests of journalists. The editor of a Gambian newspaper, The Point, was murdered in 2004.
Under Barrow, a truth and reconciliation commission hopes to recover millions of dollars Jammeh is accused of stealing from The Gambia, recipient of $3 million a year in US aid. Barrow also plans to establish a team of experts to design a blueprint for The Gambia's poverty eradication and economic development. Two winners of a Student Inspiration Award at the University of Pennsylvania used their $25,000 prize money to travel to The Gambia to do research and conduct a feasibility study for a goat dairy farm that would improve community nutrition and generate revenue for a local hospital now under construction..
Yahya Jammeh and Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had an opportunity to follow the model of Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria, but instead they have clung to power like Mobuto Sese Seko and Robert Mugabe.
Ahead of Iran's scheduled May 19, 2017, election, Supreme Leader Ayatolla Ali Khamenei, who heads what has been called a "clerical dictatorship," began helping the radical opposition led by Ebrahim Raisi, by criticizing the lack of economic improvement current President Hassan Rouhani promised the country when the nuclear deal was ratified. Nonetheless Rouhani won in a landslide. The public continues to resent Iran's jailing of opposition leaders, banning of newspapers, and cancellation of concerts. Business leaders come to Iran looking for opportunities but leave when they consider the political climate.
In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a "Muslim democrat," when he gained power in 2001, but as the winner of a constitutional referendum in 2017, he claimed authoritarian powers unknown in the years after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded a secular republic.
Conditions are similar in the Congo, where President Kabila's Republican Guards arrested opposition leader, Frank Diongo, and the popular opposition leader, Moise Katumbi, who owns a successful soccer club. Etienne Tshisekedi, opposition leader of the Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress party died at 83 in February, 2017. Despite being known as a country rich in minerals, poverty, inflation, a lack of jobs, corruption, and crime plague the economy. Social media is cut off. Although the Constitution bans presidents from seeking a third term, Kabila's second 5-year term as president ended December 19, 2016, without plans for a new election until possibly 2018.
In The Gambia, President Yahya Jammeh, a Muslim who came to power as an army lieutenant in 1994, at first accepted defeat in the country's December 5, 2016, election. He then decided to contest the results before his term expired January 19, 2017. When a coalition of West African countries threatened to use military force to oust him, Jammeh left Gambia on January 21, 2017.
Adama Barrow, the victor in The Gambia's December election delivered a Christmas message calling for "peace and tranquility." In contrast to Jammeh's condemnation of homosexuality and gay rights, Barrow promised to "protect the right of each Gambian to hold and practice the religion or creed of one's choice without any hindrance or discrimination." From the beginning of his presidency in 2011, Jammeh was criticized for his repression and intimidation of the opposition. Media criticism was met with death threats to and arrests of journalists. The editor of a Gambian newspaper, The Point, was murdered in 2004.
Under Barrow, a truth and reconciliation commission hopes to recover millions of dollars Jammeh is accused of stealing from The Gambia, recipient of $3 million a year in US aid. Barrow also plans to establish a team of experts to design a blueprint for The Gambia's poverty eradication and economic development. Two winners of a Student Inspiration Award at the University of Pennsylvania used their $25,000 prize money to travel to The Gambia to do research and conduct a feasibility study for a goat dairy farm that would improve community nutrition and generate revenue for a local hospital now under construction..
Peaceful transfers of power, what a great New Years Resolution
for world leaders and the people they lead.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Muslim Perspective: Part 1 of a 3-Part Series
When I was writing about the effort Nelson Mandela and Ali Soufan made to understand their enemies (Blog post: "Fight, Flight, or Something Else"), I realized: 1) Muslims are not my enemies, 2) Some terrorists act on their interpretation of Islam, and 3) I want to learn more about the Muslim perspective. What I have learned thus far follows in the first of a 3-Part Series.
Muslims can look back on historic conquests over the fractured Balkan states north of Greece, the eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, Spain, and the islands off Italy. Just northwest of the nearby ruins of Babylon, the ancient home of Hammurabi, Nebuchadnessar II, and Alexander the Great, Baghdad was part of the sprawling 7th century Islamic empire conquered after Mohammed's death in 632. Aside from paying taxes to their Arab conquerors, life for those in this vast area remained largely unchanged. Cosmopolitan Baghdad, which may have had a population of two million by the ninth century, resembled a city in ancient Rome. Traders from India, China, and the East Indies brought their luxury wares of spices, sugar, gems, silks,and porcelains to the wealthy port.
In lands conquered by early Muslims, citizens who were Arab, Persian, Byzantine, Greek, Hindu, and Christian shared a peaceful co-existence. Famous biblical sites in Egypt and Palestine had begun to attract Christian pilgrims as early as the second century. According to fourth century sources, both women and men reported they had faced theft, murder, and other dangers on their way to see where Jesus had lived, but there was no mention of Muslims blocking their way.
By the eleventh century, everything changed. Newly converted, fervent Muslim Seljuk Turks began attacking Christian pilgrims en route to the Holy Land. In response, Pope Urban II called for the Crusade that recovered Jerusalem in 1099. Missionaries attempted to convert Muslims in North Africa and western Asia, but Saladin, the Iraqi-born Sultan of Egypt and Syria, retook Jerusalem in 1187 by defeating the Third Crusade led by Richard the Lion Hearted. The last territory recaptured by the Crusaders was lost in 1291.
A new band of Turkish converts to Islam replaced the Seljuk Turks during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Named for their leader, Osman, they set out to establish the Ottoman Empire. First to fall were Slavic Serbia and Bulgaria on the Balkan Peninsula. Constantinople was defeated in 1453 and Romania in 1500. Control of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, most of North Africa, and Tigris-Euphrates valley followed.
By 1700, the Muslim Empire began two centuries of decline. In the east, Russia's power was on the rise just as corruption riddled the Ottoman Empire's government and its army failed to keep up with military advances. At the end of a six-year war in 1774, Russia won better treatment for Christians in the Ottoman Empire, dominated the northern Crimean coast of the Black Sea, and secured a warm water port with free passage to the eastern Mediterranean through the Dardanelle Straights, the canal-like sliver of water between the Black and Aegean Seas. Success was cut short by Napoleon's victories over Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1805 and 1806. By 1815, however, Napoleon's army was outnumbered by the combined forces of Moscow's allies: Britain the Netherlands, Austria, and Prussia.
Muslims can look back on historic conquests over the fractured Balkan states north of Greece, the eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, Spain, and the islands off Italy. Just northwest of the nearby ruins of Babylon, the ancient home of Hammurabi, Nebuchadnessar II, and Alexander the Great, Baghdad was part of the sprawling 7th century Islamic empire conquered after Mohammed's death in 632. Aside from paying taxes to their Arab conquerors, life for those in this vast area remained largely unchanged. Cosmopolitan Baghdad, which may have had a population of two million by the ninth century, resembled a city in ancient Rome. Traders from India, China, and the East Indies brought their luxury wares of spices, sugar, gems, silks,and porcelains to the wealthy port.
In lands conquered by early Muslims, citizens who were Arab, Persian, Byzantine, Greek, Hindu, and Christian shared a peaceful co-existence. Famous biblical sites in Egypt and Palestine had begun to attract Christian pilgrims as early as the second century. According to fourth century sources, both women and men reported they had faced theft, murder, and other dangers on their way to see where Jesus had lived, but there was no mention of Muslims blocking their way.
By the eleventh century, everything changed. Newly converted, fervent Muslim Seljuk Turks began attacking Christian pilgrims en route to the Holy Land. In response, Pope Urban II called for the Crusade that recovered Jerusalem in 1099. Missionaries attempted to convert Muslims in North Africa and western Asia, but Saladin, the Iraqi-born Sultan of Egypt and Syria, retook Jerusalem in 1187 by defeating the Third Crusade led by Richard the Lion Hearted. The last territory recaptured by the Crusaders was lost in 1291.
A new band of Turkish converts to Islam replaced the Seljuk Turks during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Named for their leader, Osman, they set out to establish the Ottoman Empire. First to fall were Slavic Serbia and Bulgaria on the Balkan Peninsula. Constantinople was defeated in 1453 and Romania in 1500. Control of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, most of North Africa, and Tigris-Euphrates valley followed.
By 1700, the Muslim Empire began two centuries of decline. In the east, Russia's power was on the rise just as corruption riddled the Ottoman Empire's government and its army failed to keep up with military advances. At the end of a six-year war in 1774, Russia won better treatment for Christians in the Ottoman Empire, dominated the northern Crimean coast of the Black Sea, and secured a warm water port with free passage to the eastern Mediterranean through the Dardanelle Straights, the canal-like sliver of water between the Black and Aegean Seas. Success was cut short by Napoleon's victories over Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1805 and 1806. By 1815, however, Napoleon's army was outnumbered by the combined forces of Moscow's allies: Britain the Netherlands, Austria, and Prussia.
Friday, October 9, 2015
Who Are Your Country's Super Heroes?
Judging from their popularity in comics, graphic novels, and movies, young people love super heroes. Can they match the following countries with some of their super heroes?
_____A. Mahatma Gandhi launched a program of civil 1. Pakistan
disobedience that led to independence.
_____B. Bishop Desmond Tutu called for Western 2. Poland
nations to apply sanctions that led to an end
of apartheid, i.e. segregation of blacks into
separate homelands and other indignities.
_____C. Malala Yousafzai won a Nobel Peace Prize 3. Turkey
for urging all countries to educate their
girls and women.
_____D. Fidel Castro assembled a Communist 4. France
guerrilla band that caused the country's
corrupt dictator, Fulgencio Batista, to flee.
_____E. Dorothy Day was commended by Pope Frances 5. Myanmar/Burma
as a champion of workers and the poor.
_____F. Lech Walesa organized the Solidarity 6. Cuba
trade union that began the movement
that ousted the Soviet Union from Eastern
Europe.
_____G. Aung San Suu Kyi, known as "The Lady," 7. India
who received a Nobel Peace Prize for
keeping democracy alive in the face of a
military regime takeover.
_____H. Mao Zedang, leader of the "Long March" away 8. United States of America
from rivals, who returned to lead the country in
1949 and to try rapid economic development
through a program called the "Great Leap
Forward."
_____I. Mustafa Kemal, who took the name Kemal 9. South Africa
Ataturk and was elected president in 1923,
established the country as a secular republic
after hundreds of years as part of a Muslim
empire.
_____J. Charles de Gaulle led the country's 10. China
government-in-exile until World War II
ended and he could return to be elected
President.
Answers can be found at the end of the earlier post, "What Moscow Could Learn from History."
_____A. Mahatma Gandhi launched a program of civil 1. Pakistan
disobedience that led to independence.
_____B. Bishop Desmond Tutu called for Western 2. Poland
nations to apply sanctions that led to an end
of apartheid, i.e. segregation of blacks into
separate homelands and other indignities.
_____C. Malala Yousafzai won a Nobel Peace Prize 3. Turkey
for urging all countries to educate their
girls and women.
_____D. Fidel Castro assembled a Communist 4. France
guerrilla band that caused the country's
corrupt dictator, Fulgencio Batista, to flee.
_____E. Dorothy Day was commended by Pope Frances 5. Myanmar/Burma
as a champion of workers and the poor.
_____F. Lech Walesa organized the Solidarity 6. Cuba
trade union that began the movement
that ousted the Soviet Union from Eastern
Europe.
_____G. Aung San Suu Kyi, known as "The Lady," 7. India
who received a Nobel Peace Prize for
keeping democracy alive in the face of a
military regime takeover.
_____H. Mao Zedang, leader of the "Long March" away 8. United States of America
from rivals, who returned to lead the country in
1949 and to try rapid economic development
through a program called the "Great Leap
Forward."
_____I. Mustafa Kemal, who took the name Kemal 9. South Africa
Ataturk and was elected president in 1923,
established the country as a secular republic
after hundreds of years as part of a Muslim
empire.
_____J. Charles de Gaulle led the country's 10. China
government-in-exile until World War II
ended and he could return to be elected
President.
Answers can be found at the end of the earlier post, "What Moscow Could Learn from History."
Monday, August 24, 2015
Warning to Students: Don't Cheat
Children who are motivated to cheat by copying another student's work, paying someone to write their papers, or hiring another student to take a standardized test for them could learn a few lessons from those who have avoided corruption or engaged in it around the world.
Even if the current business culture in a country sanctions corruption, the honesty espoused by Bulent Celebi's AirTies firm in Turkey offers a promising example. When Celebi established his WiFi company, which does not rely on phone lines or fiber optic cables to transmit data, he had six founding values. Besides customer satisfaction and engaged employees, he stated AirTies would be ethical. Therefore, he did not rely on bribes but, according to Elmira Bayrasli's book, From the Other Side of the World, he launched his business by working through the laborious process of dealing with Turkey's bureaucracy and paperwork. Shortcuts, he felt, would start AirTies off in the wrong direction.
While on a visit to Nairobi, Kenya, in November, 2015, Pope Francis told a cheering crowd that corruption was easy and sweet but in the end it makes politics, even in the Vatican, and a country sick. He urged the crowd to keep corruption out of its lives, because corruption takes away joy and robs people of peace in their lives.
Major European auto and truck maker, VW, will pay at least $15 billion for developing a cheating way to pass emissions tests.
As a result of bribing doctors and hospitals by giving them kickbacks, the Japanese-based manufacturer, Olympus, paid a $646 million fine.
By pretending subprime mortgages were sound, Goldman Sachs, one of the US firms that helped bring on the 2008 recession, is expected to pay about $5 billion to resolve state and federal investigations.
In Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff and House Speaker Eduardo Cunha have been implicated in a corruption scandal involving construction firms that paid bribes to Petrobras, the state energy firm. Marcelo Odebrecht, former head of Brazil's giant construction company, designed the scheme that paid kickbacks to win contracts from senior Petrobras officials and that funded political campaigns. In March, 2016, Odebrecht was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Although Rousseff thus far has been found blameless in the Petrobras scandal, the charge of her involvement has led to a call for her impeachment and hurt the country's economy by stopping building and energy projects. Petrobras has had to stop paying dividends, and the company has cut $32 billion from its 5-year $130 billion investment plan. Now that the Federal Accounts Court has ruled that Rousseff's administration used illegal accounting practices, the prospect of impeachment is even greater. Eventually, Rousseff was out, but in June, 2017, new President Michel Temer was charged with taking $11.5 million in bribes for helping a meatpacker who had tax and loan problems.
Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Iceland's Prime Minister, was the first victim of a leak of papers from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca. In April, 2016, he stepped down, when it was disclosed that he and his wife owned an undeclared off shore account where he concealed millions of dollars from taxes. The papers reveal Mossack Fonseca also has formed off shore shell companies to help other clients launder money, dodge sanctions, and evade taxes.
Nigerian authorities fined the South African-based MTN multinational mobile telecommunications company $5.2 billion, later reduced to $3.4 billion. Of MTN's 62 million subscribers, the company failed to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered, and therefore unidentified, Sim card accounts. Kidnappers had used an unregistered Sim card from MTN to demand a ransom for Nigeria's former finance minister, Chief Olu Falae.
A November, 2015 report from the World Anti Doping Agency alleging State-sponsored doping of Russia's Olympic athletes could result in banning the country from competing in 2016's Summer Olympics. And the head of the agency that selects the countries that hold World Cup soccer matches had to resign, when winning host countries were found to have bribed their way into the honor.
In Indonesia, the government's failure to keep an up-to-date land registry results in an inability to assign blame for the devastating forest fires on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo that also have spread a thick haze of smoke to Malaysia, Singapore, and southern Thailand. All together, the smoke has caused an estimated 500,000 respiratory tract infections, and 100,000 premature deaths are a possibility. Fires are set by cheap slash and burn methods used to clear for new planting by both small scale farmers and corporate palm oil, timber (used for paper), and other agricultural corporations. Standards for the hiring and working conditions of migrant labor in the palm oil industry have failed to remedy abuses. When an investigation by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil found the Malaysian palm oil company, IOI, failed to correct deforestation violations in its concessions, Unilever and 9 other major companies cancelled their contracts with IOI.
You can read about charges of corruption Russia faces in the earlier blog post, "Hearing Voices." And Communist Party officials throughout China have been severely punished as reported in the earlier blog post, "China's Corruption Crackdown, New Bank Backing, and Release of PR Activists."
Even if the current business culture in a country sanctions corruption, the honesty espoused by Bulent Celebi's AirTies firm in Turkey offers a promising example. When Celebi established his WiFi company, which does not rely on phone lines or fiber optic cables to transmit data, he had six founding values. Besides customer satisfaction and engaged employees, he stated AirTies would be ethical. Therefore, he did not rely on bribes but, according to Elmira Bayrasli's book, From the Other Side of the World, he launched his business by working through the laborious process of dealing with Turkey's bureaucracy and paperwork. Shortcuts, he felt, would start AirTies off in the wrong direction.
While on a visit to Nairobi, Kenya, in November, 2015, Pope Francis told a cheering crowd that corruption was easy and sweet but in the end it makes politics, even in the Vatican, and a country sick. He urged the crowd to keep corruption out of its lives, because corruption takes away joy and robs people of peace in their lives.
Major European auto and truck maker, VW, will pay at least $15 billion for developing a cheating way to pass emissions tests.
As a result of bribing doctors and hospitals by giving them kickbacks, the Japanese-based manufacturer, Olympus, paid a $646 million fine.
By pretending subprime mortgages were sound, Goldman Sachs, one of the US firms that helped bring on the 2008 recession, is expected to pay about $5 billion to resolve state and federal investigations.
In Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff and House Speaker Eduardo Cunha have been implicated in a corruption scandal involving construction firms that paid bribes to Petrobras, the state energy firm. Marcelo Odebrecht, former head of Brazil's giant construction company, designed the scheme that paid kickbacks to win contracts from senior Petrobras officials and that funded political campaigns. In March, 2016, Odebrecht was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Although Rousseff thus far has been found blameless in the Petrobras scandal, the charge of her involvement has led to a call for her impeachment and hurt the country's economy by stopping building and energy projects. Petrobras has had to stop paying dividends, and the company has cut $32 billion from its 5-year $130 billion investment plan. Now that the Federal Accounts Court has ruled that Rousseff's administration used illegal accounting practices, the prospect of impeachment is even greater. Eventually, Rousseff was out, but in June, 2017, new President Michel Temer was charged with taking $11.5 million in bribes for helping a meatpacker who had tax and loan problems.
Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Iceland's Prime Minister, was the first victim of a leak of papers from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca. In April, 2016, he stepped down, when it was disclosed that he and his wife owned an undeclared off shore account where he concealed millions of dollars from taxes. The papers reveal Mossack Fonseca also has formed off shore shell companies to help other clients launder money, dodge sanctions, and evade taxes.
Nigerian authorities fined the South African-based MTN multinational mobile telecommunications company $5.2 billion, later reduced to $3.4 billion. Of MTN's 62 million subscribers, the company failed to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered, and therefore unidentified, Sim card accounts. Kidnappers had used an unregistered Sim card from MTN to demand a ransom for Nigeria's former finance minister, Chief Olu Falae.
A November, 2015 report from the World Anti Doping Agency alleging State-sponsored doping of Russia's Olympic athletes could result in banning the country from competing in 2016's Summer Olympics. And the head of the agency that selects the countries that hold World Cup soccer matches had to resign, when winning host countries were found to have bribed their way into the honor.
In Indonesia, the government's failure to keep an up-to-date land registry results in an inability to assign blame for the devastating forest fires on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo that also have spread a thick haze of smoke to Malaysia, Singapore, and southern Thailand. All together, the smoke has caused an estimated 500,000 respiratory tract infections, and 100,000 premature deaths are a possibility. Fires are set by cheap slash and burn methods used to clear for new planting by both small scale farmers and corporate palm oil, timber (used for paper), and other agricultural corporations. Standards for the hiring and working conditions of migrant labor in the palm oil industry have failed to remedy abuses. When an investigation by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil found the Malaysian palm oil company, IOI, failed to correct deforestation violations in its concessions, Unilever and 9 other major companies cancelled their contracts with IOI.
You can read about charges of corruption Russia faces in the earlier blog post, "Hearing Voices." And Communist Party officials throughout China have been severely punished as reported in the earlier blog post, "China's Corruption Crackdown, New Bank Backing, and Release of PR Activists."
Thursday, October 30, 2014
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.
- 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."
Friday, November 30, 2012
Getting to Know You
Until these real time computerized translations or face-to-face meetings can occur, the next best thing is to exchange letters or e-mails with children who live in other countries. An episode on the PBS show, "Arthur," showed how correspondence with a child in Turkey dispelled the notion that children there lived in tents and rode to school on camels. There are a variety of ways to find foreign pals, but, until a real one is located, items in a kit from littlepassports.com help children learn about one country each month, and they can pretend to write letters from foreign countries they have studied. From Russia, a young make-believe correspondent might write:
Do you like to draw? I do. Yesterday our class visited the Hermitage Museum, where
we saw a painting of Napoleon. He looked very heroic, but we are learning that his
army tried unsuccessfully to defeat Russia in winter. Our winters are very cold, and we
get a lot of snow.
If a Russian pen pal is found, it would be fun for a child to compare a real letter with this pretend one.
Foreign students are in a good position to help children who are searching for a real pen pal. Classmates could have cousins and other relatives who would like to correspond with someone in the United States. Neighborhood families may be hosting foreign students who are eager to maintain U.S. ties after they return home. Then too, a local college or university is a good source of babysitters. Those from foreign countries may develop a lasting relationship that they want to maintain.
Aside from relying on personal contacts to find an international pen pal, organizations often have established structures that either can or do facilitate person to person correspondence across borders. Some agencies, such as Pearl S. Buck International (psbi.org), encourage benefactors to write to the children they sponsor. Through translators, the children send return messages to those who support them. Members of international organizations, such as Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, are in a good position to ask their leaders to find counterparts in other countries. Children also should urge cities and churches with sister cities and parishes to help them contact foreign students. The Peace Corps maintains a website, peacecorps.gov/wws/educators, that enables teachers to locate members willing to correspond with their classes. And ePals.com also helps facilitate joint projects between U.S. teachers and teachers in foreign countries.
In some areas, children may not have to go far to visit a neighborhood where foreign immigrants maintain much of their culture. A walk through Chinatown of Little Italy is an easy way to visit shops, meet people from foreign countries, and sample native foods. While traveling near and far through the United States, there are many opportunities to seek out communities that have preserved a distinctive foreign lifestyle. In Door County, Wisconsin, for example, children will find descendants of Norwegians and Swedes who settled there in the 19th century. Surrounded by brightly painted Dala horses, they can pour lingonberry syrup on their pancakes and watch goats nibble grass from the roofs of nearby log cabins.
No doubt, these foreign contacts will lead children to want to visit foreign countries. For some ideas about foreign travel, go to the earlier blog post, "See the World." Also see the blog post, "How Do You Say?"
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