Film review: Syriana

This Week we had to watch the movie Syriana. I have never seen or read any review and I have to say that a really enjoy the movie but didn't understand it very well. The plot of the movie is very complex and it's not easy to follow it, there's many stories, many character that surround "the real story". The movie explains the politics of the oil business and how people are trying to get it (oil).

The world is running out of oil, and both governments and corporations struggle with "the best style of Italian Mafia", to take control over the last "reserves" of world's oil.

(Ebert 2005) Syriana is an endlessly fascinating movie about oil and money, America and China, traders and spies, the Gulf States and Texas, reform and revenge, bribery and betrayal. Its interlocking stories come down to one thing: There is less oil than the world requires, and that will make some people rich and others dead. The movie seems to take sides, but take a step back and look again. It finds all of the players in the oil game corrupt and compromised, and even provides a brilliant speech in defense of corruption, by a Texas oilman (Tim Blake Nelson). This isn't about Left and Right but about Have and Have Not. The movie begins with one of the Gulf states signing a deal to supply its oil to China. This comes as a strategic defeat for Connex, a Texas-based oil company. At the same time, an obscure oil company named Killen signs a deal to drill for oil in Kazakhstan. Connex announces a merger with Killen, to get its hands on the oil, but the merger inspires a Justice Department investigation.

(Osborn 2005) Syriana surrounds a fictitious merger between two oil conglomerates, Connex and Kileen. Jeffrey Wright plays Bennett Holiday, Sydney Hewitt's (Nicky Henson) stooge sent to look into the merger to dispel any corruption before the Department of Justice finds it. Clooney plays Bob Barnes, a CIA operative originally sent into Beirut to snuff out Prince Nasir Al-Subaai (Akbar Kurtha), the possible heir to the Iranian throne. And Matt Damon plays Bryan Woodman, the financial advisor to Prince Nasir, who's married to Julie, played by Amanda Peet. To explain the dozens of other, more peripheral characters and their connections to these primary three would take many more pages of explanation, and would ruin the fun of being utterly lost for Syriana's entire first act. Also, these three-Clooney, Damon, and Wright-are the only fully-dimensional characters of the film. They occupy the only roles capable of thoughtful and provoking performances, save Tim Blake Nelson's thunderous speech on corruption. All three actors do well, pulling in possible nomination nods, and accentuating Writer/Director Steven Gaghan's method of understated storytelling. I think Syriana is a great film. I am unable to make my reasons clear without resorting to meaningless generalizations. Individual scenes have fierce focus and power, but the film's overall drift stands apart from them. It seems to imply that these sorts of scenes occur, and always have and always will.

While reading what the critics said about the movie I bumped in to one of the Seattle Post criticized the movie in hardly way because of the "false accusations & revelations" made to business and government corruption.

(Arnold 2005) In this year of record oil prices, oil-company profits and American casualties in Iraq, nothing, of course, could be more timely than a film that tries to lay bare some of the behind-the-scenes avarice and political expediency that has helped create the outrage.

This critic got me thinking about corruption. Whether it's because of oil, petroleum, or other economic interest, corruption exists all over the world, supposedly countries like Colombia are more corrupted than others but, unfortunately politicians all over the world are in a "global trend" of worrying about themselves and stealing people's money.

The lack of moral values and principles govern our world and even the most "respectable diplomatic" can be evolved in this scruple less action. Like my Mother says: "You never know when the heart of some one could be damaged and tented".

I started to look for some reviews that supported my opinion and I obtained infinite results. Here are the ones that I thought where more trustable and alike.

Rolling Stone, Peter Travers: "Takes off with the lightning speed of a thriller, the gonzo force of frontline journalism and the emotional wallop of a drama that puts a human face on shocking statistics"

Washington Post, Desson Thomson: "What's so powerful about the film is the rich stories it tells and how it leads them like so many human tributaries to one black, bubbling source".

New York Magazine, Ken Tucker: "A film that transcends it's obvious timeliness to say some elemental things about personal loyalty and institutional betrayal".

Portland Oregonian, Shawn Levy: "A gripping movie about espionage, loyalty and betrayal"

Time, Richard Corliss: "Not a conventionally satisfying movie but a kind of illustrated journalism: an engrossing, insider's tour of the world's hottest spots, grandest schemes and most dangerous men."

The New York Times, Dana Stevens: "It aims to be a great deal more than a standard geopolitical thriller and thereby succeeds in being one of the best geopolitical thrillers in a very long time".

TV Guide, Ken Fox: "We can only hope that the time frame is meant to be sometime before 9/11, and not after. Either way, it's a troubling vision of how terrorism and "martyrdom" occur on both sides of this ghostly war, and is both perpetrated and facilitated by the very forces enlisted to stop it".

Chicago Reader, J.R. Jones: "This is intelligent, committed, and politically provocative, though its narrative puzzle box may prompt you to throw up your hands and let Exxon go on running the world"

Entertainment Weekly, Lisa Schwarzbaum: "Indeed, the point of Syriana appears to be that the whole lousy, corrupt, oil-producing and -consuming world is a ball of wax, ready to melt"

Bibliography:

Sam Osborn (2005, December 5). Syriana Review. Retrieved, April 15 2009, of http://www.samseescinema.com/

Roger Ebert (2005, December 9). Syriana (R). Retrieved, April 15 2009, of http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/

William Arnold. (2005, December 9). Brave political drama 'Syriana' loses its sting in confusing plot. SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC. Retrieved April 22, 2009, from www.seattlepi.com/movies/251362_syriana09q.html

http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/syriana

Images were taken from: http://www.shutterstock.com/

Middle East: The Arab World and Israel

This week region of study was the Middle East the presentation gave a better perspective about these regions. First of all some the group shared some General Facts of the region, and the 3 practiced Monotheist Religions, they started to get deep in to the subject when they exposed the Economy and the Islamic Finances. Then they talk a little bit more about the Status of the Middle East Women.
Finally an excellent approach of the constituent’s members is made by giving some key cultural data facts and “teaching” the class hoe to negotiate with each one of this cultures. They start with Dubai fallowed by Qatar, Yemen and they finish this “small presentations” with the State of Israel.
As a “plus” the team shows us the trade that this region has with Colombia.
All though, all cultures have stereotypes, since 9/11 Arabs have been extremely stereotyped, and in places like, the United States and Spain, many Arabs are living rejections and experiencing discrimination.
We began this year by hearing of the “endless” conflict between Israel and Palestine. I have always wonder if this war will end some day?
Short History of Israeli and Palestinian Conflict
After World War II, the United Nations gave land to the Jewish people of the world so they could live together in peace. This land, Israel, includes holy places for the Jewish religion and is surrounded by Muslim countries. Palestinian Muslims lived on the land at the time that the United Nations gave it to the Jewish people.
Portions of the land given to the Jewish people, or taken over by them when they won wars against Arab states, are also holy for Muslims. Certain portions of Jerusalem controlled by Israel, called "East Jerusalem," are very important to Muslims. For religious reasons, Palestinian Muslims believe that they must gain control of East Jerusalem as part of any lasting peace settlement.
Further, Palestinians view themselves as living in an occupied nation, where invaders (Israelis) have placed them under military rule. To fight back, Palestinians have built a terrorist network to attack innocent Israeli civilians. Israelis feel they must continue to control Palestinians with military force to protect themselves against more terrorist attacks.

My Question goes beyond the reasons of the conflict and it’s about the psychological damage that this has caused on Israelis and Palestinians. Some of the young warriors of this two nations “don’t even know” why this war started or why they are fighting about, they just know why it must continue; regrets are the reasons to fight the other part that “must pay”, they’ve killed their family, friends, teacher or girlfriend.
“The pain that has caused this war to all citizens of both nations is huge”

(Rausing 2009)There will never be peace in the Middle East until Palestinians and other Arabs confront the reality of anti-Semitism
On 3 January 2009 , the MP George Galloway spoke in Trafalgar Square. "Brothers and sisters," he began. "Comrades and friends. Salaam alaikum. Peace be upon you.
"In April and May of 1943 the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto were surrounded by barbedwire fences, by the occupiers of Poland, and they faced a choice, in the words of the song of the partisans: they could die on their knees or they could live for ever. And tliey chose to rise up against their occupiers, to use their bodies as weapons . . . Today, the Palestinian people in Gaza are the new Warsaw Ghetto, and those who are murdering them are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 19 43 ."
Mr Galloway and his supporters, and probably the majority of people in this country, are righdy angry about Israel's recent bombardment of Gaza. As many as 1,40 o people were killed, women as well as children. Forty per cent of Gaza's homes were destroyed, and people were deprived of food, water and medicines. The Israeli (and Egyptian) blockade, which in effect kept a million and a half people locked in, has been unethical and politically senseless. Hamas won power through the ballot box; Israel, Egypt and Fatah need to negotiate with them.
But Gaza is not like die Warsaw Ghetto. The Israeli soldiers are not like the Nazis. The claim of moral equivalence is dangerous, not because it exaggerates the horror of Gaza (the reality of that bombardment was probably worse than we can really imagine), but because it minimizes the horror of the Holocaust.
This, to remind readers, is what the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was like. Before the war, Warsaw's Jewish population numbered about 350,000 and was die second -largest Jewish community in the world, after New York's. The population of the ghetto, at its height, due to enforced deportations into the ghetto, was about 445, 000 people, in just over two square miles. From 19 40 to mid -19 42, approximately 83,000 Jews there died of starvation or disease. In the summer of 1942, an estimated 300,000 Jews were deported from the ghetto, mainly to the Treblinka extermination camp. More than 10,000 people were murdered during die deportations; meanwhile, 35,000 people were granted permission to remain in the ghetto; an additional 20,000 or so stayed in hiding.
In October 1942, Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler gave the order to liquidate the ghetto, and deport all Jews to concentration camps. On 18 January 19 43 a small number of resistance fighters, armed with pistols, hid in a column of deportees and fought the German guards. Most were killed. Deportations, however, were temporarily suspended.
On 19 April 1943, on the Eve of Passover, the SS and the police resumed deportations. This was the signal for armed uprising. Mordecai Anielewicz led the first battle, in which 12 Germans were killed or wounded. By the third day, SS General Jürgen Stroop ordered diat every building in the ghetto be destroyed. Anielewicz was killed on 8 May.
By June 1943, the ghetto was destroyed; not a house was left standing. The survivors of the uprising were sent to Treblinka and Majdanek, where all but a few thousand perished.
George Galloway was not alone in his Holocaust comparisons. Here are some New Statesman readers' comments posted on the website during die Gaza bombardment:

* "Why does the israeli Jewish Zionists TERRORIST thug regime keep terrorising Palestinians, witli their horrific genocidal bombardment over and over";
* ". . . the Gaza Concentration Camp realities";
* ". . . apartheid Israel killed about 1,340 Occupied Palestinians in its Gaza Concentration Camp";
* "why don't the Jews move to Texas, it would solve all problems".

This is a conflict that is played out in the realm of words and symbolism.
The Hamas Charter obsessively refers to the Zionist conspiracy, and freely compares Israelis to the Nazis. British liberals may note the distinction between anti-Semitism and antiZionism, but tliey should also recognise that "Zionist conspiracy" is common code for "Jewish conspiracy".
In the Arab world, anti-Semitism is tolerated, and often publicly expressed. Here are some quotes from the Egyptian cleric Muhammad Hussein Ya'qoub, delivering a speech on al-Rahma TV on 17 January this year:

"You must believe tliat we will fight, defeat and annihilate them, until not a single Jew remains on the face of the earth."
"As for you Jews - the curse of Allah upon you. The curse of Allah upon you, whose ancestors were apes and pigs."

The quotes above are taken from the Middle East Media Research Institute, which publicizes Muslim anti-Semitism. It's real and destructive. It also fuels Israeli nationalism.
We know the narrative of anti-Semitism, but do we know the narratives of racism against Palestinians in Israel? It's there, and ugly, yet we barely know how to talk about it outside the clichés of anti -Zionism. Do we call it racism?
There is, however, a lively human rights movement within Israel itself, which is establishing a common language for discrimination against Palestinians: B'Tselem, Sikkuy, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel and many other civil society groups are working to advocate Palestinian rights. They transcend the incendiary metaphors of genocide in tliis conflict, all of which helps to build peace.

There will never be peace in the Middle East until the Palestinians confront the antiSemitism that they now openly encourage, and which British pro -Palestinian groups and international funding agencies tacitly accept. They must acknowledge the reality and pain of the Holocaust. The Israelis must also acknowledge Palestinian suffering, the loss of life, land and livelihoods, and the present discrimination against Palestinians within Israel.

There will probably never be an agreed Palestinian/Israeli version of history, but mutual acknowledgement of historical and present suffering are a necessary precondition of peace.

Bibliography

• Labour pains in the Middle East. (2008, March). Economist.com / Global Agenda. Retrieved May 7, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1455180361).
• Sigrid Rausing. (2009, April). The code for conspiracy. New Statesman, 138(4946), 19. Retrieved May 7, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1703667361).
• Tony Judt. (1999, July). The morbid truth. Review of medium_being_reviewed title_of_work_reviewed_in_italics. The New Republic, 221(3/4), 36-40. Retrieved May 7, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 43089903).
• http://www.awesomelibrary.org/MiddleEastConflict.html#history
• images were taken from: http://www.shutterstock.com/

Workshop: India

1. According to Gangury-Scrase & Scrase (1999) had globalisation in India provided significant improvement of living for lower-income workers by 1999? Justify.

After the ratification of the GATT India's economy has experienced many changes due to globalization, this changes are both economically and cultural. But this liberalization has had a contradictory effect on social structure.

Globalization has defiantly improved the situation of the country, due to the greater access to information, knowledge, credit access and women have more working areas to choose. Changes can also be seen as well in the sexual mores, the dating practices and there's even a growing rejection to arranged marriages.

But the social benefits are not so clear.

Gangury-Scrase & Scrase (1999) findings are very interest but quite disappointing, first of all income levels have risen for the lower middle classes, but their purchasing power has remain flat because of high levels of inflation. Second, the credit access has improve for this class but it comes with "the price" of paying monthly high interest rates and takes them in to a cycle of consumptions and debt. Third, they have aspirational desires of consumptions that can not be real because of debt concerns. Fourth, even though they are happy about the opening in electronic media, some foreign content "attacks" their culture and morality and also increase their consumerism. And finally there's a resilience of Bengali culture.

(Frumin 2009) Despite its annual economic growth of more than 6% since the early 1990s, India is a country that "has barely scratched its potential," Mr. Nilekani writes. It has "enormous advantages in its youngpopulation and its entrepreneurs,"-the country's median age is a shocking 23-"a growing it capability, an English-speaking workforce and strength as a democracy." And yet one-third of the population is illiterate; 90% of students drop out before they reach high school; cities are unplanned, sprawling messes; electricity is spotty; roads are clogged, potholed or nonexistent; laws and governance are arbitrary and stilted; and hundreds of millions of people live in poverty.

2. How is the situation for workers in India today?

(Schuman 2009) In January the Federation of Indian Export Organizations warned that 10 million Indian workers might lose theirs in coming months, amid what A. Sakthivel, the group's president, called "the worst year in history" for exporters.

(Tripathi 2007) Only 8 per cent of India's workforce of 430 million people are in the organised sector where unions may represent them. And within that sector, the proportion who work for companies that supply to multinationals - and hence may come under the gaze of western NGOs - is even smaller. Their campaigns to improve conditions of workers at such factories make the headlines and provide relief to some. But they cannot transform the system.

(Robinson 2009) Indians believe in a kind of demographic destiny: because India will pass China as the most populous country on earth sometime in the next couple decades, many are sure India will become a huge world power as well. To ensure continued success, however, India's government will have to find a way to spread the benefits of the current boom. Hundreds of millions of people remain mired in poverty; the child malnutrition rate is an incredible 45%, higher than in sub-Saharan African countries like Ethiopia; and pockets of rebellion, especially in India's vast rural areas, where two-thirds of the people still live, threaten long-term stability. If India gets it right, though, the 21st century could belong to the world's biggest democratic freemarket just as much as it does to a certain Communist behemoth to the north.

3. How cultural globalisation has affected Indian in the last 2 decades?

(Sen 2007) With a sweeping and ambitious vision for liberalization, privatization and globalization, India threw open the doors to economic reform in the early 1990s – and the staggeringly successful results continue to accumulate. Ironically, only after thousands of years of culture, higher education, innovation and other important contributions to humankind in engineering, science, the arts and philosophy, India is now the world's overnight success story. With 1.1 billion people living peacefully in the world's largest democracy, India is emerging as one of the truly great economic and political nations of the 21st century.

Unlike perhaps any other country, India stands as a shining testament to the power of globalization. India's GDP is growing at an astounding 8 percent, and most industries are facing the pleasant challenge of managing exceptionally high growth rates. As the second most populous country in the world and the seventh largest (by area), India already boasts the world's 12th-largest economy and the third largest in terms of purchasing power. And by most indications, its best days still lie ahead.

4. Describe India's Green Revolution. (http://www.indiaonestop.com/Greenrevolution.htm)

The world's worst recorded food disaster happened in 1943 in British-ruled India. Known as the Bengal Famine, an estimated four million people died of hunger that year alone in eastern India (that included today's Bangladesh). The initial theory put forward to 'explain' that catastrophe was that there as an acute shortfall in food production in the area. However, Indian economist Amartya Sen (recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics, 1998) has established that while food shortage was a contributor to the problem, a more potent factor was the result of hysteria related to World War II which made food supply a low priority for the British rulers. The hysteria was further exploited by Indian traders who hoarded food in order to sell at higher prices.

Nevertheless, when the British left India four years later in 1947, India continued to be haunted by memories of the Bengal Famine. It was therefore natural that food security was a paramount item on free India's agenda. This awareness led, on one hand, to the Green Revolution in India and, on the other, legislative measures to ensure that businessmen would never again be able to hoard food for reasons of profit.

However, the term "Green Revolution" is applied to the period from 1967 to 1978. Between 1947 and 1967, efforts at achieving food self-sufficiency were not entirely successful. Efforts until 1967 largely concentrated on expanding the farming areas. But starvation deaths were still being reported in the newspapers. In a perfect case of Malthusian economics, population was growing at a much faster rate than food production. This called for drastic action to increase yield. The action came in the form of the Green Revolution.

There were three basic elements in the method of the Green Revolution:
(1) Continued expansion of farming areas;
(2) Double-cropping existing farmland;
(3) Using seeds with improved genetics.

Results of the Green Revolution: Statistical Results of the Green Revolution The Green Revolution resulted in a record grain output of 131 million tons in 1978-79. This established India as one of the world's biggest agricultural producers. No other country in the world which attempted the Green Revolution recorded such level of success. India also became an exporter of food grains around that time. Yield per unit of farmland improved by more than 30 per cent between 1947 (when India gained political independence) and 1979 when the Green Revolution was considered to have delivered its goods. The crop area under HYV varieties grew from seven per cent to 22 per cent of the total cultivated area during the 10 years of the Green Revolution. More than 70 per cent of the wheat crop area, 35 per cent of the rice crop area and 20 per cent of the millet and corn crop area, used the HYV seeds.

Crop areas under high-yield varieties needed more water, more fertilizer, more pesticides, fungicides and certain other chemicals. This spurred the growth of the local manufacturing sector. Such industrial growth created new jobs and contributed to the country's GDP. The increase in irrigation created need for new dams to harness monsoon water. The water stored was used to create hydro-electric power. This in turn boosted industrial growth, created jobs and improved the quality of life of the people in villages. India paid back all loans it had taken from the World Bank and its affiliates for the purpose of the Green Revolution. This improved India's creditworthiness in the eyes of the lending agencies

The Green Revolution created plenty of jobs not only for agricultural workers but also industrial workers by the creation of lateral facilities such as factories and hydro-electric power stations as explained above. India transformed itself from a starving nation to an exporter of food. This earned admiration for India in the comity of nations, especially in the Third World.

5. Did the British Raj enriched or impoverish India? Justify.

It Impoverished India. (Lal 2008) When Did India's Growth Acceleration Begin? From the earlier account of the partial liberalization in the 1980s, it would appear that there was some acceleration in the growth rate in the 1980s. But the dash for growth, which raised growth rates just before the 1991 crisis, was not sustainable. It was the much fuller liberalization in 1991 that put India on a higher-growth path. So the 1990s should really be taken as the period when India's growth acceleration began.

By the turn of the 20th century, the struggle for complete freedom was growing more intense. Led by the Indian National Congress and the charismatic Mahatma Gandhi, who preached non-violent protest, millions of Indians engaged in campaigns of civil disobedience. At first the English rulers resisted the demands for independence; but change became inevitable, and at midnight on Aug. 15, 1947, the nation of India was born.

The break with Britain was far from smooth. States where Muslims were the majority, in the northwest and northeast of the country, were carved off as the separate nation of Pakistan. (East Pakistan would later go to war to secure its own independence as Bangladesh). Partition, as the division of Hindu and Muslim British India was called, led to the migration of some 15 million people as Hindus and Muslims rushed to make sure they were on the right side of the new national boundaries. As many as 2 million people were killed in sectarian fighting during the great reordering.

India is the world's largest democracy. For much of its existence, parliament has been controlled by the Congress party, which has long been dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi family (no relation to the Mahatma). The clan has given India three prime ministers: Jawaharlal Nehru, who held power for India's first 17 years; his daughter Indira Gandhi, who ruled in the late 1960s and '70s and again in the early '80s and who was killed by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984; and her son, Rajiv Gandhi, who took over after the death of his mother and was himself assassinated in 1991. Rajiv Gandhi's widow Sonia, Italian by birth, led the Congress party to an unexpected return to power in 2004 but turned down the prime minister's post, installing instead the highly regarded technocrat Manmohan Singh. Rajiv and Sonia's son Rahul, now a member of parliament, is often talked about as a future leader.

For many decades, India's economy remained protected and over-regulated, condemning the country, it seemed, to a disastrously slow "Hindu rate of growth." But from the early 1990s successive governments have begun to dismantle the "license Raj," which handed control of key industries to a handful of companies and suffocated competition and progress. Liberalization is credited by many with kick-starting India's economy. New industries such as data processing and software engineering, centered in such southern Indian cities as Bangalore and Chennai, have attracted thousands of jobs from the U.S. and Europe. (Western workers whose jobs have been outsourced complain of being "Bangalored.") By late 2006 growth was more than 9% a year, a rate that had international investors looking at India in the same way they had China in the early 1990s.
Bibliography:

Greg Rushford. (2008, March). INDIA: THE EMERGING GIANT. Review of medium_being_reviewed title_of_work_reviewed_in_italics. Far Eastern Economic Review, 171(2), 62-64. Retrieved May 17, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1448396571).

Finance And Economics: Bridges to somewhere; India's economy. (2009, March). The Economist, 390(8621), 82. Retrieved May 17, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1656666231).

Ben Frumin. (2009, May). IMAGINING INDIA: THE IDEA OF A RENEWED NATION. Review of medium_being_reviewed title_of_work_reviewed_in_italics. Far Eastern Economic Review, 172(4), 66-68. Retrieved May 17, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1708622951).

Business: A teacher for the times; Face value. (2009, February). The Economist, 390(8620), 72. Retrieved May 17, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1653833321).

Rick Merritt. (2008, March). Indian industry's people power is also a people problem. Electronic Engineering Times,(1520), 12,54. Retrieved May 17, 2009, from ProQuest Computing database. (Document ID: 1465578021).

Talent Challenged, Training Obsessed. (2008, March). InformationWeek,(1176), 34. Retrieved May 17, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1469310931).

Salil Tripathi. (2007, December). India's small workforce. New Statesman, 136(4873), 19-20. Retrieved May 17, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1393596801).

Deepak Lal. (2008). AN INDIAN ECONOMIC MIRACLE? Cato Journal, 28(1), 11-34. Retrieved April 19, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1474487651).

Simon Robinson. India. Time Magazine. Retrieved April 19, 2009, from www.time.com/time/topics/article/0,8599,1650448,00.html

Miachel Schuman. Potholes On the Path to Prosperity.
Time Magazine. Retrieved April 19, 2009, from www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1873191_1873190_1873187,00.html

Sudipta K. Sen (2007 June). India 2008: responding to the growth imperative. Sascom Magazine. Time Magazine. Retrieved April 19, 2009, from http://www.sas.com/news/sascom/2008q3/column_globalmarkets.html

Images Were taken from: www.shutterstock.com

AFRICA

Monica, Ana Maria y Eduardo presented this week topic: Africa.

Africa is the world's 2^nd-largest and 2^nd most-populous continent, after Asia. It has an area of 30,221,532 km² and a population 1,001,320,281(est. 2009).

Is the 2^nd largest continent but a quarter of its territory is not suitable for habitation, because it's the the Sahara Desert.

The student's presentation highlighted the differences across the continent by exploring the main countries of Africa, such as Nigeria, Congo and Kenya. They made a great resume of the history and all the problems that has had this continent over the years.

When presenting the different countries they revelead "each countries problem or conflict" factors like the post-colonialism, diamonds, guerrillas, economical and social problems, have made this continent suffer like no other. In addition to these conflicts, Africa also has other social problems like high level of malnutrition, AIDs and many other diseases.

Nigeria is characterized in the media based upon the conflicts and violence arising between subversive groups, the state and oil companies.

South Africa is a completely different face of the continent, the host of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Even thought the lecture was very enlightening, I must recognize my lack of knowledge of this continent, being a person that likes to read and know about "as much as I can" I started to read whatever I found about this continent and found a great but crude article in The Time Magazine, Next I will put the passages that I liked the most or the ones that shocked me the most (in red).

Africa has a genius for extremes, for the beginning and the end. It seems simultaneously connected to some memory of Eden and to some foretaste of apocalypse. Nowhere is day more vivid or night darker. Nowhere are forests more luxuriant. Nowhere is there a continent more miserable.

Africa -- sub-Saharan Africa, at least -- has begun to look like an immense illustration of chaos theory, although some hope is forming on the margins. Much of the continent has turned into a battleground of contending dooms: AIDS and overpopulation, poverty, starvation, illiteracy, corruption, social breakdown, vanishing resources, overcrowded cities, drought, war and the homelessness of war's refugees. Africa has become the basket case of the planet, the "Third World of the Third World," a vast continent in free fall.

Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko has a personal fortune that has been estimated from $4 billion to $6 billion, not far below the level of the country's external debt. He has isolated himself from his people -- and from gathering political unrest -- aboard a luxury yacht that cruises the Zaire River.

If it is to recover, Africa in the coming years will need all its mystical powers of resilience. AIDS is devastating the continent's population. It has hit as hard among the cosmopolitan, educated elite as among the villagers, a fact that threatens continuing development.

If the rate of infection continues to increase, the effect could be like that of World War I upon the youth of Britain, France and Germany.

There are 160 countries on the United Nations' annual development index, a measure of comparative economic and political progress: 32 of the lowest 40 are in Africa.

The external world's interest in Africa threatens to become merely charitable -- a matter of humanitarianism, a moral test for the West. Should the wealthy nations allow Africa to drift further and further into the margins? Says Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution: "I don't think we could live with ourselves, or would want to, if we sat by while millions of people of a different color are condemned to misery and death."

The continent's inner rhythms of development were shattered 400 years ago by the intrusion of Europeans, who brought in alien controls, boundaries and forms of government.

The continent remains connected to its powerful and -- to outsiders -- mysterious genius. Africa is different, still an inchoate self. There is a Europe, with its shared history, shared culture, shared economies -- all. Accomplished the hard way, over many centuries. There is not -- yet -- an Africa of defined, stable boundaries and economies, not yet a sense of shared destiny.

Jung once wrote, "Different people inhabit different centuries." Something in the African clock of development got smashed when Europe broke into the continent. And when the colonialists pulled out, they left the economic, political and cultural infrastructure reconfigured in such a way that the new countries served Europe better than they served one another. This result was not necessarily intentional but was profoundly damaging nonetheless. Robert Ruark touched on the cultural destruction in his novel Something of Value: "If you change a man's way of life, you had better have something of value with which to replace it."

It may be a long swoop from Africa's year 1500 to European-sounding formulas about "science and rationality." In 1961, with civil war erupting around him and his own assassination only days away, Patrice Lumumba, the newly independent Congo's first Prime Minister, wrote a letter to his wife in which he conjured a splendid vision: "History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that is taught in Brussels, Paris, Washington or in the United Nations . . . Africa will write her own history, and . . . it will be a glorious and dignified history."

Perhaps, for the moment, African glory lies around a historical bend of the river, in some unseeable future.

Bibliography:

LANCE MORROW; William Dowell/Abidjan, J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Marguerite Michaels/Nairobi. (1992 Sep 07). Africa: the Scramble for Survival. The Time Magazine. Recover April 12 2009, from www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,976401-6,00.html

Image was taken from http://www.shutterstock.com/

This week's focus was South Asia.

South Asia is a sub region of the continent located at the south of China, east of India, and the north of Australia. This sub region is very important because it includes Four of the Five "Tigers" or also known as NICs (Newly Industrialiizyng Countries).

The region is divided in two: The Mainland South East Asia and the Maritime South East Asia.

Maritime Countries: Brunei- East Timor- Indonesia - Malaysia- Philippines - Singapore- Hong Kong- Taiwan

Mainland Countries:- Cambodia- Laos - Myanmar- Thailand- Vietnam

Like East Asia, this Region is influenced by millenary philosophic trends:

• Confucianism
• Buddhism
• Taoism
• China or a strong Chinese expatriate community
• Status
• Karma
  

Some of the materials for this topic was, the presentation made by Maria Alejandra G. Which had a especial insight on Vietnam; an almost unknown country for me, if it weren't for its war.

The presentation exposes the economic and social system of this country and its history, such as the Vietnam War.

Vietnam is not an exception to its region growing trend and has a "promising" future as well.

(Greenhalgh 2009)"In five to 10 years' time, the traditional emerging markets will be too developed and the focus will shift over to the next block of countries, such as Nigeria, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam." Andrea Nannini, manager of the HSBC New Frontiers fund says.

Before the miracles of East Asian (with the exception of Japan), South Asia was already surprising the world with its development and its strong economies, like Singapore and Thailand. When thinking about this an immediately react and wonder, if the crisis is for everyone, what will happen with this tigers or potential tigers?

(Wesley 2009) How can Asian countries individually and collectively deal with this looming crisis? Unfortunately, the obvious solutions are not practical. Redrawing boundaries or relocating minorities offer the prospect of beginning an endless process of claim and counter-claim that could see a stable region unravel into chaos. Hard experience shows that re-engineering populations and boundaries often causes more conflict than it resolves. Neither do the several current proposals to forge an EU-style regional organization offer much prospect of success. Achieving Europe's current level of integration and sovereignty transfer is unlikely to happen in Asia for several decades. And it is not even certain that regional institutions defuse internal conflicts; while "Europe" may have contributed to peace in Northern Ireland, it has made little impact on Basque disgruntlement.

The solution must be a re-forging of the national compact across the states of East, Southeast and South Asia, based on the rejection of ethnic, religious or linguistic identity as a motivating force in politics. There must be a renaissance of the secular compact in Asia's states. The new secularism must be driven by three principles.

First, it must be scrupulously protected from compromise by identity politics. The original reasons for mobilizing the symbols of national majorities- however surreptitiously-are less compelling now than they were half a century ago. Then, the need to forge distinctive national identities had arisen from uncertainties about the viability and legitimacy of the political units that remained after the colonial retreat. But now, after six decades of stability and success, these insecurities are less justified. And the humiliation of colonization will decrease with each passing generation, taking with it the need to assert cultural or spiritual superiority. Second, Asia's new secularism must be popularized and promulgated throughout Asia's societies, rather than becoming again the ideology of elite dominance. Asia's secularism will not be like Europe's, where the official separation of the state and religion has been accompanied by a century-long decline in the public's interest in religion. Instead, Asia's secularism will need to be grafted onto societies in which religion plays a central role in everyday life. But even a deeply religious society can come to accept at all levels that the state must at no stage become the vehicle for advancing religious agendas, and must never be able to use ethnic, religious or linguistic symbolism in promoting its own agendas. To be effective, this agenda needs to be championed by that genuinely, deeply secular force, the media, and promoted through the public education system. Third, the integrity of Asia's new secularism needs to be constantly guarded from the forces of opportunistic populism. The most potent drivers of contemporary identity politics in Asia are driven by contemporary economic and technological events and a surge in political populism.

Bibliography:

Agarwal, Sanjeev, Thomas E DeCarlo, Shyam B. Vyas, & Source:. 1999. Leadership Behavior and Organizational Commitment: A Comparative Study of American and Indian Salespersons. Journal of International Business Studies, 30(4): 727-43.

Hugo Greenhalgh. (2009, May 18). Emerging markets of the future. Financial Times,12. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1716686931).

Michael Wesley. (2009, April). Asia Enters An Era of Strife. Far Eastern Economic Review, 172(3), 14-18. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1682395351).

Image taken from Shutterstock.com