(before third exam)
All postings are from most recent to first posted
New York Times Stories...Mideast News Items
humor...British Political Geography CIESIN global informationNEW YORK TIMES STORIES
31 March 98
1 Japan agrees to rev up its economy (another indication of Japan's acceding to US pressures)
1 Russia has no "vision" or "national idea" -- even the new national anthem has no words
1 Israel will not budge on its plans for West Bank turnbacks. Dennis Ross (US envoy) returned to the US with nothing
10 Saudi Arabia says it's completed its inquiry into the 1997 bomb blast that killed US airmen in Riyadh but has not released its information and may not do it. [Suspicion fell on Iran, but S.A. is trying to improve relations with Iran so would not want to irritate it.]
8 Hong Kong and its institutions are being challenged by the integration with China. The "free" press has been faced with some challenges and people/firms with strong mainland connections are not being prosecuted for some offenses, like fraud.
4 Africa: Senegal, an exemplar of what's right in Africa for many years, is faulted for the apparent rigging of coming elections in favor of the ruling party. There have been only two rulers of the country since its independence from France in 1960
4 Africa: South African universities with mainly African enrollment are having trouble collecting tuition payments. That's been going on for years and student riots have prevented the universities from pressing students. But with big deficits and the government's statement that they will not bail out universities, students are being pressed more than before to pay up or be "cancelled" as students. The students claim they should be given free tuition because of the pain and suffering caused them by apartheid.
27 Op_Ed page...Item on NATO expansion (against) and Saddam Hussein's sweet deal from Kofi Annan, secretary general of the UN
From: Bill Reid
Subject: Tigris and Euphrates
Is anyone here following the Tigris and Euphrates water issue? This is a fragment from the daily news at (http://home.imc.net/turkey/) for 4/24/96 by Ayse Karabat. (I saw no copyright marker, but there may be one somewhere in the doc.) ANKARA- Amid increased tensions with Syria over the water question, Turkey informed Syria that it would decrease the flow of Euphrates water during the course of the upcoming Sacrifice Festival (Kurban Bayrami).
The Turkish Daily News has learned that Turkey will release to Syria 200 cubic meters of water per second during the course of the religious holiday.
Ankara did this last year, as it uses the long holiday for annual maintenance of the Ataturk dam. Despite the citing of technical reasons, Syria has been outraged by the decision.
Bill (at the Hanford Site)
P.S.: Looking into this *yet another terrible issue* leads me to conclude that nearly all resource issues have different maps than to cultural ones. Also, and this does not apply in all ways to the Tigris-Euphrates Basin, where Europeans have imposed national boundaries they often are marked from coastal exploration. Cultural boundaries are based on (1) the environmental gradient from coast to interior and (2) drainage basins, at least the smaller ones. (Seems obvious but has it been looked at in a numerical-GIS way?)
BRITISH POLITICAL GEOGRAPHERS
The titles of the papers might be of interest to you. U.Sussex has a reputation among conservatives in England for being "trendy lefty."
Subject: Capitalism Conference
To: Multiple recipients of list GEOPOL
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THE DIRECTION OF CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM
An International Interdisciplinary Conference
University of Sussex
Friday 26th to Sunday 28th April 1996
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the de facto conversion of China, capitalism is now for the first time in history an economic system that encompasses the whole globe. The direction of the interlinked capitalist economies, and of the societies built on them, is therefore now the direction of the whole world. Yet since 1989 interest in the specific dynamics of capitalist economies and capitalist societies has if anything declined, to be replaced by reflections on 'postmodernity' in which the economic realm is scarcely mentioned except in discussions of shopping.
This conference, which is organised by the innovative Social and Political Thought Graduate Programme at Sussex University, aims to examine the direction in which contemporary societies are moving by looking at those societies essentially as capitalist
societies, and by refocusing on a question that recent discussion in social and cultural theory has tended to lose sight of: how are the social, cultural, political and legal changes they are undergoing related to changes in their economic organisation?
A range of distinguished speakers from different countries and disciplines will be addressing some of the major developments in capitalist economies and societies over the last few decades: the internationalisation of capital flows, the privatisation and deregulation of domestic economies, the 'informationalisation' of the economy, the 'desecuritising' of employment, an apparent attenuation of state sovereignty, the erosion of the taken-for-granted nature of cultural traditions, a partial transformation in the position of women, a liberalisation of sexual attitudes, an increased orientation towards consumption, the decline of socialist politics, and the rise of new forms of exclusive nationalism on the one hand, and of the politics of environmentalism, 'civil society', and identity on the other. They will be asking how universal these changes are, how they are related to each other, what they mean for the future, and what their implications are for social theory and political philosophy. Sessions will be convened under the broad headings of Economy and State, Society and Culture, and Philosophical and Historical Perspectives.
The conference promises to be one of the most exciting events of the year for those interested in the underlying direction of modern societies.
The conference fee is 35 pounds sterling (waged) or 15 pounds sterling (students and unwaged; limited places), including refreshments.
PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME
Friday 4.00-5.15 pm Registration
ECONOMY AND STATE
Friday 5.15-6.45 pm
Disembedding and Deregulation
Elmar Altvater (Free University, Berlin) 'The Unchained World Market' Alan Scott (University of East Anglia) 'Free Markets by Design?'
Friday 6.45-8.15 pm Dinner
Friday 8.15-9.45 pm Two parallel sessions:
Models of Capitalism
John Scott (University of Essex) 'Established and Emergent Variants of Capitalist Development'
Ronald Dore (London School of Economics) 'Still Capitalism with Such Feeble Capitalists? The Case of Japan'
Hans Singer (University of Sussex) 'State and Markets in Developing Countries'
The End of Full Employment and the Changing Nature of Work
Andrew Glyn (Corpus Christi College, Oxford) 'Why Has Full Employment Disappeared?'
Anne Gray (Independent consultant) 'Flexibilisation of the Labour Market: Its Effect on Workers' Struggles'
Discussant: Stephen Wood (London School of Economics)
Saturday 9.15-10.45 am
Globalisation and the Nation-State
Michael Mann (UCLA) 'The Future of the Nation-State'
Martin Shaw (University of Sussex) 'The Global State: Perspectives on the Globalisation and Fragmentation of State Power'
SOCIETY AND POLITICS
Saturday 11.00 am - 12.30 pm
Civil Society and Capitalism
Jeffrey Alexander (UCLA) 'Rethinking 'Capitalism' in the Context of the Revival of 'Civil Society''
Respondent: Krishan Kumar (University of Kent)
Saturday 12.30-2.00 pm
Lunch
Saturday 2.00-3.30 pm
Reflexive Modernisation and Risk
Mike Rustin (University of East London) 'The Reflexive Modernisation Thesis'
Frank Furedi (University of Kent) 'Risk-Consciousness: The Escape from the Social'
Saturday 3.45-5.15 pm
Two parallel sessions:
Nationalist and Right-Wing Movements in Europe
Piero Ignazi (University of Bologna) 'The Origin of the New Extreme Right Movements'
Klaus Eder (Humboldt University, Berlin) 'Mobilizing Collective Identities:A New Problem for Social Movement Theory and Research.'
Social Movements from Above and Below
Orlando Fals Borda (National University of Colombia, Bogota) 'The Political Impact of Social Movements in Latin America'
Leslie Sklair (London School of Economics) 'Social Movements for Global Capitalism: The Transnational Capitalist Class in Action'
Saturday 5.30-7.00 pm
Two parallel sessions:
Is There a Future for Socialist Movements After 1989? Adam Michnik (Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw)
Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper / University of Manchester)
The Rise of Identity Politics
Shere Hite (El Mundo, Madrid) 'Women and the New Identity Movements: Whose Side Are We On?'
Respondent: Gita Sahgal (independent film-maker and writer)
Saturday 7.00-8.30 pm
Dinner
Saturday 8.30-10.00 pm
Gender, Sexuality and the Market
Alan Sinfield (University of Sussex) 'Consuming Sexualities: The Politics of the Pink Pound'
Angela McRobbie (Loughborough University of Technology) 'Getting to Grips with Consumption: A Feminist Critique'
Discussant: Judith Williamson (Middlesex University)
PHILOSOPHICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Sunday 9.30-11.00 am
Two parallel sessions:
Contemporary Capitalism and Law
Bob Fine (University of Warwick) 'The Recovery of 'Rights' in Contemporary Social Theory'
Chris Thornhill (King's College, London) 'Understanding the Law: Hermeneutics and Sovereignty'
Contemporary Capitalism and Social Justice
Jan Narveson (University of Waterloo, Ontario) 'Capitalism: Still the Right Answer to the Right Question?'
Respondent: David Pepper (Oxford Brookes University)
Sunday 11.15 am - 12.45 pm
Communitarianism and Capitalism
Hans Joas (Free University, Berlin) ''It's the Values, Stupid': Value Oriented Movements and Capitalist Society'
David Willetts (Minister for Public Service, British Government) 'Conservatism and Community'
Jonathan Boswell (St. Edmund's College, Cambridge) 'Remaking Prescriptive Communitarianism: Groups, Firms or Society?'
Sunday 12.45-2.15 pm
Lunch
Sunday 2.15-3.45 pm
Critical Theory and Contemporary Capitalism
Helmut Dubiel (Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt) 'The Critical Theory of Disorganised Capitalism'
Respondent: Ivan Vejvoda (University of Sussex)
Sunday 4.00-5.30 pm
The Historical Place and Destiny of Capitalism
Ellen Meiksins Wood (York University, Toronto) 'Capitalism or Modernity?'
Bob Jessop (Lancaster University) 'Political Economy and the Governance of Complexity: The Future of Capitalist Regulation in a Post-Modern Age'
Sunday 6.30-7.30 pm
Supplementary Sessions
Question and answer sessions with some of the main conference speakers, in parallel.
The CIESIN Gateway provides you information about data bases useful for the study of global change, sustainable development, and human interactions in the environment. Gateway links you to the NASA Global Change Master Diretory, the NOAA Environmental Directory, the CIESIN Information Cooperative, and other useful directories. We hope that you will find this search tool helpful in discovering data and information resources available world wide.
The World Wide Web interface to the CIESIN Gateway has been developed by the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) which is operated by CIESIN for NASA's Mission to Planet Earth Program. SEDAC is one of nine Earth Observation System data centers. SEDAC's mission is to develop and deliver information products and services that integrate social and natural science data in ways useful for decision making. CIESIN has also been designated as World Data Center-A for Human Interactions in the Environment by the International Council of Scientific Unions.
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The CIESIN Gateway http://www.ciesin.org/ gateway/gw-home.html.
Intercultural communication
FROM A 1996 RELEASE FROM THE BRITISH REUTERS NEWS AGENCY
Tehran (Reuters) - For the past few weeks, the behind the doors discussion at many Iranian newspaper and magazine publishing outfits seems to be revolving not around political, social and economic issues, but the spelling of Bob Dole's name instead. It turns out that the proper spelling of the Republican Party's likely nominee, Dole, is exactly the same as that of the word penis in Persian. ``At first it might seem funny to some people, but it's creating a serious issue for us. How can we write headlines using that word?,'' said Majid Fanni, a prepress specialist at a Tehran service bureau.
Professor Hassan Khadem, a Persian literature lecturer at New York University added ``It's actually not a real problem. In Persian, certain vowels are optional. [Therefore] they could write his name a couple of different ways to avoid the ambiguity. But for an exact pronunciation, 'Dowl' as opposed to 'Dol', well, they'd have to spell it that way.'' anni xplained ``It's not easy. In print, especially for headlines, we don't use [optional] vowel symbols. Because of that, his name can be read in that way.''
International organizations are quite familiar and cognizant of these types of issues. General Motors for example, spends over 300,000 dollars a year just researching car names to make sure they are not trade marked, as well as being acceptable in foreign countries.
Ali Zarkoob, a grade school teacher in Western Tehran said ``I'm sure kids will find it very funny. The humor magazines will probably go crazy over it too.'' A columnist for Tehran's Hamshahri daily who requested to remain anonymous stated ``It's a real problem that no one wants to face. Think about it. What should we write if he wins? 'Clinton loses Presidency'? That's not right. 'Penis wins US Presidency' isn't exactly acceptable either.''
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