Humanitarian Texts

2005-11-01: John Kenneth Galbraight – USA – a text;
2005-11-04: Societies Collapse;
2005-11-05: Human concerns – Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875);
2005-11-06: Human concerns – Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861);
2005-11-07: Human concerns – Robert Browning (1812-1889);
2005-11-08: Human concerns – Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892);
2005-11-09: Human concerns – Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849);
2005-11-12: CMSI / WSIS Tunis;
2005-11-12: Human concerns – Charles Dickens (1812-1870);
2005-11-13: Human concerns – Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855);
2005-11-14: Se necesita voluntad politica para enfrentar la pobreza;
2005-11-18: COMPROMISO DE TÚNEZ 2005;
2005-11-18: CIA’s harsh Interrogation Techniques;
2005-11-19: Programa de acciones de TÚNEZ, sociedad de la informacion;
2005-11-20: Centrality of Human Rights;
2005-11-22: Standing Up Against Torture;
2005-11-25: US Lawyers Front for CIA;
2005-11-30: Karl Ruf (Kari) – Schweiz.

Requiem für Kari – eine Liebesgeschichte aus Afrika, Eine Reportage von Christoph Müller

Inhalt: Im Regenwald des Kongo versuchte er, die letzten Naturparadiese dieser Welt zu retten, und bezahlte sein Engagement mit dem Leben. Karl Ruf starb vor anderthalb Jahren bei einem Autounfall, auf dem Rückweg von Verhandlungen mit Rebellenführern. Karl Ruf, den alle Kari nannten, hatte eine bemerkenswerte Karriere gemacht: der gelernte Metzger war Tierpfleger im Basler Zoo geworden, dann leitete er Präsident Mobutus Menagerie und schliesslich wurde er im Okapi-Reservat des Ituri Urwaldes zum Naturschützer. Heute führt seine Witwe Rosie das gemeinsame Lebenswerk weiter. Eine tapfere Frau, die in diesem Gebiet, wo immer noch gesetzlose Zustände herrschen, alles tut, um die Pflanzen und Tiere dieses Waldes zu retten. Allen voran das Okapi. Das scheue Tier ist zum Symbol geworden für die Gefährdung dieses Reservates, das von der Unesco zum Weltnaturerbe gezählt wird. (Siehe Sendung vom 30. November 2005 im Schweizer Fernsehen).

RODRIGUEZ approuves CIA Tortures – US Lawyers Front for CIA, by Clayton Hallmark – Friday, Nov. 25, 2005: We describe CIA treatment of prisoners so you can judge for yourself. Each escalation of maltreament reportedly comes ONLY after an inquiry to, and approval from, JOSE RODRIGUEZ, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) at the McLean, VA, headquarters. We describe how the torture works and how agents work it with Mr. Rodriguez (and allegedly with his predecessors, Stephen Kappes and James Pavitt). The CIA shuttles the prisoners around the world on civilian aircraft, almost all of which the CIA owns. The CIA owns the aircraft through holding companies that have one employee — a contracted private attorney in the US. A Smithfield, NC, firm, Aero Contractors, operates most of the planes. We show how the CIA aviation office works with private attorneys. The lawyers have no need to know what the planes are used for, and undoubtedly the CIA does not tell them about prisoner transports.

See Shell Game.

The fronts are set up by lawyers (see below). They are holding companies for aircraft and they provide a mail drop for business related to the aircraft, such as registering with the FAA and the state secretary-of-state. Several real companies — contractors, some set up by the CIA — have actual operations, including employees and premises such as aircraft hangars.

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CIA’s “Torture Taxi” in the Spotlight, By MIKE FERNER: Sitting in a Georgia motel Saturday night, Kathy Kelly talked through a bad phone connection and a worse head cold to recount the previous day’s activities where she and 13 others were arrested at an airstrip outside Raleigh, North Carolina. (See the whole on Counterpunch.org).

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Linked with Rikke Frank Joergensen – Denmark.
Centrality of Human Rights – The Information Society must be based on human rights as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This includes civil and political rights, as well as social, economic and cultural rights. Human rights and development are closely linked. There can be no development without human rights, No human rights without development. This has been affirmed time and again, and was strongly stated in the Vienna World Conference of Human Rights in 1993. It was also affirmed in the WSIS 2003 Declaration of Principles. All legislation, politics, and actions involved in developing the global information society must respect, protect and promote human rights standards and the rule of law.

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INTRODUCCIÓN
1. Reconocemos que ha llegado el momento de pasar a la acción, considerando los trabajos que ya se han hecho para aplicar el Plan de Acción de Ginebra e identificar las esferas en las que se han logrado avances, se están logrando avances o aún no se han logrado avances.
2. Reafirmamos los compromisos adquiridos en Ginebra y nos basamos en ellos en Túnez centrándonos en los mecanismos de financiación destinados a reducir la brecha digital, en el gobierno de Internet y en cuestiones conexas, así como en la aplicación y el seguimiento de las decisiones tomadas en Ginebra y Túnez.
Mecanismos de financiación para hacer frente a las dificultades que plantea la utilización de las TIC en favor del desarrollo.

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Found in ABCnews of Nov. 18, 2005 — Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by top officials of the CIA have led to questionable confessions and the death of a detainee since the techniques were first authorized in mid-March 2002, ABC News has been told by former and current intelligence officers and supervisors.

They say they are revealing specific details of the techniques, and their impact on confessions, because the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen. All gave their accounts on the condition that their names and identities not be revealed. Portions of their accounts are corrobrated by public statements of former CIA officers and by reports recently published that cite a classified CIA Inspector General’s report.

Other portions of their accounts echo the accounts of escaped prisoners from one CIA prison in Afghanistan.

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1. Nosotros, representantes de los pueblos del mundo, reunidos en Túnez del 16 al 18 de noviembre de 2005 con motivo de la segunda fase de la Cumbre Mundial sobre la Sociedad de la Información (CMSI), reiteramos nuestro apoyo categórico a la Declaración de Principios y al Plan de Acción adoptados en la primera fase de la Cumbre Mundial sobre la Sociedad de la Información celebrada en Ginebra en diciembre de 2003.
2. Reafirmamos nuestra voluntad y nuestro compromiso de construir una sociedad de la información centrada en la persona, abierta a todos y orientada al desarrollo, con arreglo a los objetivos y a los principios de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas, el derecho internacional y el multilateralismo y respetando plenamente y apoyando la Declaración Universal de los Derechos humanos, a fin de que todos los pueblos del mundo puedan crear, consultar, utilizar y compartir la información y el conocimiento para desarrollar su pleno potencial y alcanzar las metas y los objetivos de desarrollo acordados internacionalmente, entre ellos los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio.

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Por Mary Robinson (*) – NUEVA YORK, Oct (IPS) – “Enfrentar la pobreza es un asunto complejo.” ¿Por qué he oído decir ésto tan a menudo, precisamente ahora cuando el tema de la pobreza vuelve a estar en el primer puesto de la agenda mundial? La pobreza está en la base de los mayores problemas que el planeta enfrenta actualmente, desde la degradación ambiental a la inseguridad y los conflictos armados. De modo que era justo reconocerla como prioridad de la Cumbre del G8 de julio último, de la Cumbre Mundial sobre los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio de septiembre pasado y de la decisiva conferencia de la Organización Mundial del Comercio prevista para diciembre próximo en Hong Kong.

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See on this site – Danish philosopher and defender of religious faith. Kierkegaard deeply affected theologians and Existential philosophy, which became a fashion among intellectuals in the second quarter of the 20th century. Like Friedrich Nietzsche, Kierkegaard was an unhappy, neurotic, and terribly suffering man. He opposed all strict philosophical constructions, and hid his thoughts behind a number of pseudonyms, which sometimes ironically commented each other’s opinions. During his career Kierkegaard published some 30 books.

“Like that other celebrated Dane, Prince Hamlet, he was wracked with doubt and with anguish, a world of Latin origin which he endowed with a new shiver of fear. He was less a philosopher than a theologian, and less a theologian than a eloquent and sensitive man. A Lutheran evangelist, he denied the arguments that prove the existence of God and the incarnation of Jesus, considering them absurd from a rational point of view, and he proposed an act of individual faith for every believer… Religion was the strongest of his passions.” (Jorge Luis Borgess in Total Library, 1999)
Søren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, where he also spent all his days. Kierkegarrd’s surname derived from the name of a farmstead, where his ancestors once lived – a farm (gaard) located near the village church (kirke/kierke).

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See on this site – English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens’s works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy. He had also experienced in his youth oppression, when he was forced to end school in early teens and work in a factory. Dickens’s good, bad, and comic characters, such as the cruel miser Scrooge, the aspiring novelist David Copperfield, or the trusting and innocent Mr. Pickwick, have fascinated generations of readers.

“In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.” (from Great Expectations, 1860-61)
Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, during the new industrial age, which gave birth to theories of Karl Marx. Dickens’s father was a clerk in the navy pay office. He was well paid but often ended in financial troubles. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then to Chatham, where he received some education. The schoolmaster William Giles gave special attention to Dickens, who made rapid progress. In 1824, at the age of 12, Dickens was sent to work for some months at a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his father John was in Marshalea debtor’s prison. “My father and mother were quite satisfied,” Dickens later recalled bitterly.

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La Carta Internacional de los Investigadores para las Sociedades del Conocimiento- una contribución de la Asociación Internacional de Estudios de Comunicación Social (AIECS – AIERI – IAMCR) a la Cumbre Mundial de la Sociedad de la Información-.

En todo el mundo, la investigación académica se ve desafiada por presupuestos decrecientes y a la vez un incremento del control de los resultados por una variedad de actores entre los que se incluye a los gobiernos, mientras que los investigadores están siendo sometidos a cambios perjudiciales y sin precedentes en su status, salarios e independencia de sus investigaciones. La Cumbre Mundial de la Sociedad de la Información (CMSI) ha ayudado a promover debates en todo el planeta, sobre la necesidad de alcanzar un acceso igualitario y sin trabas a los medios de comunicación y al contenido informativo.

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See on this site – One the greatest and unhappiest of American poets, a master of the horror tale, and the patron saint of the detective story. Edgar Allan Poe first gained critical acclaim in France and England. His reputation in America was relatively slight until the French-influenced writers like Ambroce Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, and representatives of the Lovecraft school created interest in his work.

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?” (from The Premature Burial, 1844)
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to parents who were itinerant actors. His father David Poe Jr. died probably in 1810. Elizabeth Hopkins Poe died in 1811, leaving three children. Edgar was taken into the home of a Richmond merchant John Allan. The remaining children were cared for by others. Poe’s brother William died young and sister Rosalie become later insane. At the age of five Poe could recite passages of English poetry. Later one of his teachers in Richmond said: “While the other boys wrote mere mechanical verses, Poe wrote genuine poetry; the boy was a born poet.”

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See on this site – He is named also the 1st Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Freshwater – English author often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850; he was appointed by Queen Victoria and served 42 years. Tennyson’s works were melancholic, and reflected the moral and intellectual values of his time, which made them especially vulnerable for later critic.

“Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.”
(from ‘The Princess’)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, a clergyman and rector, suffered from depression and was notoriously absentminded. Alfred began to write poetry at an early age in the style of Lord Byron. After spending four unhappy years in school he was tutored at home.

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See on this site – English poet, noted for his mastery of dramatic monologue. Robert Browning was long unsuccesful as a poet and financially dependent upon his family until he was well into adulthood. In his best works people from the past reveal their thoughts and lives as if speaking or thinking aloud.

“Be sure I looked up her eyes
–Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
–Made my heart swell, and still it grew
–While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
–Perfectly pure and good; I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
–In one long yellow string I wound
–Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
–I am quite sure she felt no pain.”
(from ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ in Dramatic Lyrics, 1842)

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See on this site – English poet, the wife of Robert Browning, the most respected and successful woman poet of the Victorian period. Elizabeth Browning was considered seriously for the laureateship that eventually was awarded to Tennyson in 1850. Her greatest work, SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE (1850), is a sequence of love sonnets addresses to her husband. Browning’s vivid intelligence and ethereal physical appearance made a lifelong impression to Ruskin, Carlyle, Thackeray, Rossetti, Hawthorne, and many others.

“What do we give to out beloved?
A little faith all undisproved
A little dust to overweep,
And bitter memories to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake.
He giveth His beloved, sleep.”
(from ‘The Sleep’)

Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born at Coxhoe Hall, near Durham. Her father was Edward Moulton-Barrett, whose wealth was derived from sugar plantations in the British colony of Jamaica. Mary Graham-Clarke, her mother, came from a family with similar commercial interests.

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See on this site – Danish writer, famous for his fairy tales, which were not meant merely for children but for adults as well. Andersen used frequently colloquial style that disguises the sophisticated moral teachings of his tales. Before achieving success as a playwright and novelist, Andersen was trained as singer and actor. Many of Andersen’s fairy tales depict characters who gain happiness in life after suffering and conflicts. ‘The Ugly Duckling’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’ are Andersen’s most intimate works.

“He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him; for the great swans swam round the new-comer, and stroked his neck with their beaks, as a welcome.” (from ‘The Ugly Duckling’).

Hans Christian Andersen was born in the slums of Odense. His father, Hans Andersen, was a poor shoemaker and literate, who believed he was of aristocratic origin. Andersen’s mother, Anne Marie Andersdatter, worked as washerwoman. Although she was uneducated and superstitious, she opened for his son the world of folklore. Later Andersen depicted her in his novels and in the story ‘Hun duede ikke’. Anne Marie declined into alcoholism and died in 1833 in a charitable old people’s home. Andersen’s half-sister Karen Marie may have worked as a prostitute for a time; she contacted her famous brother only a few times before dying in 1846.

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O livro ‘Collapse – How societies choose to fail or survive’ de Jared Diamond, o autor do famoso ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ (ver sugestão nesta página), parte da história de algumas sociedades que atingirem níveis bastante complexos de organização (na Ilha de Páscoa, Os Maias, etc.) e analisa um conjunto de factores – destruição do ambiente, alterações climáticas, relações comerciais, povos vizinhos hostis, e, acima de tudo, as respostas que as sociedades dão aos problemas ambientais incluindo a forma como gerem a utilização dos recursos naturais – , que podem actuar em conjunto ou não e com importância variável, para explicar a sua falência e o seu sucesso. População crescente, produtividade limitada, sobrexploração dos recursos e deflorestação, levou as sociedades descritas por Diamond ao colapso.

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Linked to our presentation of John Kenneth Galbraight – USA – the biography on November 1, 2005.

Remember November 1985, the first publications in Harper’s Magazine, and found today in the web on home olemiss edu, (go there and find many more interesting links). Here the text: read it as it would have been written today. This text is still definitively pertinent.

John Kenneth Galbraight: How to Get the Poor Off Our Conscience !!

I would like to reflect on one of the oldest of human exercises, the process by which over the years, and indeed over the centuries, we have undertaken to get the poor off our conscience.

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