Comments on: Wednesday Night #1328 - with Hon. David Kilgour

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:41:33 +0000

Illegal organ trade dupes world’s poor
Impoverished people from countries including Brazil, Romania and India are lured into selling organs by black marketeers looking to supply body parts to patients in wealthier countries, Organ Watch warns. American and Japanese consumers are the world’s largest purchasers of illegal organs.
Toronto Star `Living cadavers’ forced by poverty to sell organs

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:29:23 +0000

From: Noah Weisbord
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 2:07 PM
Diana- I just received this from the Harvard Committee on African Studies, and am sending it to show you and David that we heard it first at Wednesday Night. Noah
To:african-studies-list@fas.harvard.edu
Subject: Today at 5:30: Harvard Talk on Water and Darfur
“Ground Water Basins in Darfur and Surrounding Deserts”
Farouk el-Baz, director of Boston University’s Centre for Remote Sensing and Adjunct Professor of Geology, Ain Shams University, Cairo

The Times (UK) July 19, 2007
Darfur lake ‘could bring peace’ - Foreign Staff
A newly found imprint of a vast, ancient underground lake in Sudan could
end fighting in the Darfur region, a US geologist claims.
“What most people don’t really know is that the war, the instability, in
Darfur is all based on the lack of water,” said Farouk el-Baz, director
of Boston University’s Centre for Remote Sensing and Adjunct Professor of Geology, Ain Shams University, Cairo

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 04:38:32 +0000

Reading List (2)
Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
In the epilogue to her biography of Mao Tse-tung, Jung Chang and her husband and cowriter Jon Halliday lament that, “Today, Mao’s portrait and his corpse still dominate Tiananmen Square in the heart of the Chinese capital.” For Chang, author of Wild Swans, this fact is an affront, not just to history, but to decency. … . From the outset, Chang and Halliday are determined to shatter the “myth” of Mao, and they succeed with the force, not just of moral outrage, but of facts. The result is a book, more indictment than portrait, that paints Mao as a brutal totalitarian, a thug, who unleashed Stalin-like purges of millions with relish and without compunction, all for his personal gain. Through the authors’ unrelenting lens even his would-be heroism as the leader of the Long March and father of modern China is exposed as reckless opportunism, subjecting his charges to months of unnecessary hardship in order to maintain the upper hand over his rival, Chang Kuo-tao, an experienced military commander.

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 04:38:03 +0000

Reading List (1)
The Writing on the Wall: Why We Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face It as an Enemy, by Will Hutton
The economics editor of The Guardian performs an ambitious dissection of U.S. and Chinese economic policy, sounding the alarm that “the implications could not be more profound” should Western superpowers fail to shape China into a workable model of democracy and enlightenment. Delving into the 3,000 year history of the Chinese, Hutton introduces readers to Confucius and Mao, the rise of Chinese Communism and the political experiments that have left the Chinese economy “in an unstable halfway house-an economy that is neither socialist nor properly capitalist run by a party that is neither revolutionary nor subject to the normal constitutional checks and balances of even China’s own Confucian past.” The big questions-of how much longer the Communist party can deliver economically, of where the world will head if U.S. protectionism triumphs in painting the East as an enemy-are brilliantly analyzed, with an eye toward maximizing gain for all players….

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 18:04:56 +0000

It may seem a fine distinction, but there can be no doubt about Stalin’s Gulags and Hitler’s concentration camp systems that they were an integral part of the national economies in both instances. The China case may be a little more ambiguous in that the official status or policy status of these crimes is unclear. One advantage is that it allows the Chinese government to save face as these horrors are brought to light by shutting them down.
No question that it is anyhow part of a global problem posed by the shortage of donated organs–and that donations are no longer really viable as the proportion of oldsters grow (raising demand) and the available young donors are disproportionately residents of middle to poor income countries.
Years ago, a British economist, Richard Titmuss, argued in The Gift Relationship, that some commodities like blood and organs will be supplied at higher quality levels if organized in donation programs that rely on altruism rather than by cash payment. The Chinese solution shows (once more) that efficiency is a morally dangerous value.
Guy Stanley OWN

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:36:50 +0000

August 13, 2007
China, Filling a Void, Drills for Riches in Chad
Chad is as geographically isolated as places come in Africa. It is also among the continent’s poorest and least stable countries, the scene of recurrent civil wars and foreign invasions since it gained independence from France in 1960.
None of that has put off the Chinese, though. In January, they bought the rights to a vast exploration zone that surrounds this rural village, making the baked wilderness here, without roads, electricity or telephones, the latest frontier for their thirsty oil industry and increasingly global ambitions.
The same is happening in one African country after another. In large oil-exporting countries like Angola and Nigeria, China is building or fixing railroads, and landing giant exploration contracts in Congo and Guinea.More

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 03:10:23 +0000

Couchiching 2007 The young people on the podium this year were so impressive. I was thrilled –the new generation is taking life by the scruff of the neck and giving it an invigorating shake. We are in very good hands for our intellectual future and I can barely wait to see it unfold. For the first time, CPAC is putting the sessions on downloadable units and I highly recommend the Sunday morning sessions, or for that matter, all of Sunday, the Saturday night panel with the creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie – flash- Couching moment –after listening to two days of concerns about Muslims and terrorism and she looked at the audience and with a twinkle in her eye said – for all your worries about our being a threat to Canadian values, we saved the CBC! This was a good Couch- one worth discussing. Margaret Lefebvre OWN