Forums > Social Discussion > Social/ Racial Unrest (???)

the best smiles are the ones you lead to

i would have changed ***** to phallus, and claire to petey Petey

Rougie: but that's what I'm doing here
Arnwyn: what letting me adjust myself in your room?..don't you dare quote that on HoP...

the best smiles are the ones you lead to

"Here kitty kitty...." - Schroedinger.

Written by: Dentrassi

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Racist induced violence is probably at its lowest ever.

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After much consideration, I find that the view is worth the asphyxiation.
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I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

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In China, it's powerlessness to the people - Sam Crane (UPDATED)
By Sophie Beach :: 2005-12-18

From the Los Angeles Times:

EARLIER THIS month, Chinese police shot and killed as many as 20 protesters (the numbers are in dispute) in Dongzhou village, near Hong Kong. The use of lethal force was unusual, but the underlying grievances were commonplace: powerless townspeople demonstrating against local government practices that endanger their meager existence.

Economic inequality is growing in China. It is fueling an increasing number of desperate attempts by poor farmers and workers to hold on to what little they have. In 2004, there were, by government accounts, about 74,000 public disturbances nationwide, an increase of about 20% from 2003. This year, several instances of government repression of popular protests captured the world media's attention. In Taishi, Guangdong province, villagers exercising their right to recall corrupt local officials were beaten and harassed. In Huankantou, Zhejiang province, two elderly women were killed when police suppressed a demonstration against a polluting factory. In Shengyou, Hebei province, thugs bused in by party bosses set upon townspeople protesting a land grab by an electric power company.

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Sudan: Dam draws fresh fears of social unrest

One of Africa's largest dams, now under construction in Sudan, carries a hefty price for the environment and threatens intensified social unrest, project critics say.

By Inter Press Service, Emad Mekay | 05.05.2005

The Merowe/Hamadab Dam Project, a 1.5-billion-dollar effort on the fourth cataract of the Nile River, would double the country's energy capacity but in the process would displace more than 50,000 people, mainly small farmers living along the river, they say.

A group representing local groups warned that the project also would destroy archeological sites in the area, where early human and African civilisations evolved and ruled from the Nile Valley to Palestine.

Project planning has been secretive and people who will be directly affected have not had their voices heard, Askouri, a former official in Sudan's water and irrigation ministry, said in an e-mail interview from Sudan.

"If we ignore those issues today, generations in the very near future will find it imperative to go to war due to fatal and unnecessary mistakes committed by these short-sighted politicians," he added. "The project is not sustainable, and it stands completely against all guidelines adopted by the United Nations and other world organisations working in the field of water and environment."

Locals do not stand completely opposed to the project, however. Rather, they have sought a break postponement to allow for public consultation and to satisfy them that the project's likely environmental and social impacts have been thoroughly investigated.

The U.S.-based International Rivers Network (IRN) and British-based Corner House...said the project...already had displaced 10,000 people from fertile land along the Nile to the Nubian Desert where the land is barren with little groundwater supply.

"The re-settlers were promised free services such as water, electricity, and fertilisers for a two-year transition period but are being cheated out of most of these services," the report said.

"In Sudan, large infrastructure projects, pipelines and agricultural schemes have in the past created a serious social and ethnic tensions and fueled conflicts that turned into major humanitarian disasters," said Peter Bosshard of IRN.

In November 2000, the World Commission on Dams, established by the World Bank and The World Conservation Union to assess the merits of the hydro-electric facilities, released a highly critical report saying that dams had generated less power, irrigated less land, and supplied less drinking water than projected.

Germany's Lahmeyer International is carrying out the engineering and project management and the Swiss unit of French-based conglomerate Alstom is in charge of the electro-mechanical works. Officials from both companies were not available for comment.
Chinese construction companies including China International Water and Electric Corporation also are involved, along with local Sudanese companies specialising in civil works, according to project documents from Lahmeyer. Work is scheduled for completion by the end of 2008.
Arab financial institutions, including the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, the Saudi Fund for Development, and The Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, are providing 700 million dollars in project financing, according to Lahmeyer.
More than 300 million dollars is coming from The Export-Import Bank of China, which is backed by several Western commercial banks. Sudan's government is covering the remaining 500 million dollars, Lahmeyer said.
The project is drawing fresh interest from groups like IRN as it follows on the heels of pledges by international donors of some 4.5 billion dollars in support for reconstruction and development in war-blighted Sudan over the next three years. These pledges in turn have triggered expectations that new infrastructure investment also will follow, especially in the key electricity sector.
"The Merowe/Hamadab Dam is a test case of whether the basic rights of affected people and the environment will be safeguarded in such investments," said Bosshard. "The generous international support for Sudan's reconstruction is welcome, but donors must ensure that social and environmental standards are respected in the process."

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the best smiles are the ones you lead to

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Help! My personality got stuck in this signature machine and I cant get it out!

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Newsweek article "Pain in the middle" Nov.21st

...The picture is clearest when you look at the number and fate of the world's middle- class countries (rather than middle-class individuals, although the story there is not so terrific, either). For all the great progress of the past four decades or so, from the end of colonialism and communism to the birth of the Information Age, only four economies—South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan—have managed to join the ranks of "high income" nations, now defined by the World Bank as countries with a per capita gross national income (GNI) of more than $10,066. That is to say that, by Western standards, on average their citizens are now reasonably comfortable.

Most others have faltered. In fact, writes World Bank economist Branko Milanovic in his recent book, "Worlds Apart," the number of countries in the comfortable zone has fallen from 41 in 1960 to 31 today, and the number of rich non-Western nations has fallen from 19 to nine. At the same time, incomes of the richest countries, which were 16 times higher than those of the poorest countries in the 1960s, grew to be 35 times higher by 1999.

This purging of the ranks of middle-class nations has been accompanied by an unhealthy stability in the ranks of the poorest states. In 1960 there were 25 countries in the Fourth World, the poorest segment of countries, those with a GDP per capita less than $1,067. Only two have escaped: Botswana and Egypt. Downward mobility has been more common worldwide than upward mobility. Among 22 nations that, according to Milanovic, qualified during the 1960s as "contenders," meaning they could have reasonably aspired to join the club of the rich within a generation, more than 90 percent ended up regressing deeper into poverty....

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the best smiles are the ones you lead to