Foreign Policy–A Marshall Plan for Africa

Think about it: something has to change in how we work in Africa!

clipped from www.foreignpolicy.com Think Again: A Marshall Plan for Africa America brought Europe back to life a half-century ago. Why not give Africa the same chance? The Marshall Plan was fundamentally different from the aid that Africa has received over the past four decades. The Marshall Plan made loans to European businesses, which repaid them to their local governments, which in turn used that revenue for commercial infrastructure — ports, roads, railways — to serve those same businesses. Aid to Africa has instead funded government and NGO development projects, without any involvement of the local business sector. The Marshall Plan worked. Aid to Africa has not. An African Marshall Plan is long, long overdue. Aid groups will argue that such a plan, grounded in building up the local African economy, can never work. Here are the objections they’ll make to an African Marshall Plan — and why they’re wrong.

Life in the West Bank

I can’t be in Jordan without facing the reality of what is happening one the other side of the Jordan/Israel border. If only CNN and their pals would pay attention!!! Please read this quick posting (clipped below) , then watch “Who profits from Israeli occupation” (also below or at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L32Nama7ad8). I heard about both from Juan Cole (Uof Michigan Middle East expert-guy and great blogger) at http://www.juancole.com/. Get the word out!!

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com An Account of Life on the West Bank On August 3, my husband Mohammed Khatib, and my little brother Abdullah, were taken from their beds in our West Bank village of Bil’in at 3 AM by the Israeli military. My husband is a member of the Bil’in Popular Committee, which has been leading our village’s nonviolent campaign against Israel’s construction of a Wall and a settlement on our land. For nearly five years, every Friday we have been joined by supporters from Israel and around the world as we attempt to march to our land on the other side of the Wall. According to the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the settlement amounts to a war crime, and in 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled the Wall illegal. Despite this, the construction of the Wall and settlements continued, and we are treated as criminals in our quest for justice. On top of tens of arrests, hundreds of protesters from Bil’in have been injured and one has been killed by the Israeli military.

The video:

System of Lies… What happened to us?

I just read this article about how the press has been usurped by political agendas–see clip below and read the whole, well-researched article at http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=33681.  I am depressed, the people who claimed they would save us from Orwell’s 1984 style governance were busy CREATING it.  Glad I never bought their crap, but still depressed that so many do.  When did we as a nation stop thinking and start just following the crowd?  Sigh…

Then I read an article about all the protesters showing up at health care town halls (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090812/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_protests).  I am now considering the possibility that such people are being planted to disrupt the meetings and discredit reform that might actually ensure that we get better health in spite of an industry that only wants to profit on our illness.  Seriously, if ppl knew what HMOs, suppliers, and others did, they’d be BEGGING the government to get involved!!!

Gaaa!!!  Yep, I’m a leftest loony. But I’m also an idealist, and I believe in American democracy at it’s finest, where a free press challenges government assertions. This perversion of the press as marketing tool is depressing and disgusting.

Get the word out!

clipped from www.middle-east-online.com Palin’s ‘Death Panel’ and GOP Lying During the early 1980s, Republicans were adopting a conscious approach to deception that was qualitatively different from what was common in politics. With the aid of a growing right-wing media, the GOP covered up ghastly crimes by its allies and enflamed public opinion against its adversaries, regardless of the facts, notes Robert Parry. False Republican claims about President Barack Obama’s health-care initiative, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s demagogic charge about a “death panel,” are part of a pattern of systematic lying that has marked the GOP’s political tactics at least since Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s. Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush , can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com.

VOA Censored in USA!

I can see VOA propaganda being problematic–but shouldn’t we be allowed to hear what they’re telling others? This article is interesting (and pro-VOA) but also, we should have access to the media supported by our taxes.  I recommend reading it in full (it’s only 2 short pages!)…

clipped from www.foreignpolicy.com Censoring the Voice of America Why is it OK to broadcast terrorist propaganda but not taxpayer-funded media reports? This muzzling of VOA comes at a time when the U.S. media is shrinking, eliminating foreign bureaus, and increasingly relying on stringers (of sometimes dubious quality) for its news. VOA and other U.S. public diplomacy organizations, meanwhile, are staffed with professional journalists and editors who are adept and experienced with covering goings-on about the world.

Peace Corps Lessons

These speak to me…tho I’d add to number 10 “or know when not to”… My time in Morocco produced a few too many “don’t get so close to me creep” moments so I’d suggest keeping in mind where SHE’s coming from…

clipped from ivancampuzano.com Top 10 lessons I learned as a Peace Corps Volunteer 1. To know your world, you have to see it- All too often we find ourselves constrained by what is immediately in front of our faces. The same breakfast cereal, the same job, the same routine television schedules, the same life. While there can be great comfort in routine, there is a whole big world out there, and unfortunately it is not just outside your window or through your T.V. screen. Earth is blessed with a multitude of peoples, cultures, landscapes, languages and things to see and do. Whether you take on a life changing commitment such as the Peace Corps, or just take an extended vacation, make sure you go someplace new and different. Open your mind and your eyes to the different facets of the world, and your life will be richly rewarded in direct proportion to how much you are trying to experience.

Fundamentals

Just a reminder. Thanks Ruben Harris!

clipped from rubenharris.posterous.com Fundamentals Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. - William A. Ward

Do it over–Fix Graduate Educationion

I like many of the suggestions in this article (tho can only clip 1000 characters, so it’s worth reading the whole thing) and am proud that my program, Community, Agriculture, Recreation, and Resource Studies (CARRS) at Michigan State University, is already doing interdisciplinary, problem/theme-focused research and teaching.

clipped from www.nytimes.com End the University as We Know It By MARK C. TAYLOR GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans). The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors

Hamas 2.0

Forgot how great is Foreign Affairs.

clipped from www.foreignaffairs.com Summary – The January war in Gaza overshadowed the fact that Hamas is in the midst of an unprecedented ideological transformation — and it’s time for the West to pay attention. MICHAEL BRÖNING is Director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung office in East Jerusalem, a German political foundation affiliated with the Social Democratic Party. He is a regular contributor to German newspapers and magazines, including Die Zeit and Der Spiegel. For decades, Western decision-makers have viewed Hamas as a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy the state of Israel and thus will never accept a territorial compromise based on a two-state solution.