The last issue of ROAPE(No. 74) looked at the new DRC government's emerging economic policies. Here we give more detail on its reconstruction plans, erratic foreign investment policies and ...increasingly repressive efforts to counter growing domestic and external opposition - all of these intensifying debate among Congolese civil society and potential foreign aid donors.
Reconstructing the Congo Collins, Carole J.L.
Review of African political economy,
12/1997, Letnik:
24, Številka:
74
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This follow-up to 'The Congo is Back!' in the June issue of ROAPE(No. 72) focuses on the ADFL's (Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo) economic project and plans for ...reconstruction; Western and African governmental and private sector responses to the Congo's economic prospects; how Kabila's ongoing dispute with the UN over human rights abuses during the ADFL advance may affect these; and how civil society is faring in the new period.
The UN's intervention in the Congo in 1960 was the largest UN peacekeeping operation up to that time. The UN's role in the Congo crisis is examined, focusing on the part played by Andrew W. Cordier, ...Dag Hammarskjold's executive assistant.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Presents the views of Jubilee 2000, the international coalition of non-governmental organizations, on the failures of the 1999 Group of Seven summit in Cologne. Notes that far more debt cancellation ...is needed for the world's poorest countries. Discusses the growing impact of Jubilee 2000, indicating that it has pushed the member states of the Bretton Woods Institutions to pledge new funding, secure changes in bank and fund policies to achieve deeper debt relief for more countries, and ensure civil society organizations a greater role in debt relief activities. Reports on further actions taken by the coaltion and outlines its future goals.
Three stages of consciousness are identified by Freire (1973): semi-intransitive consciousness, transitive consciousness, and critically transitive consciousness. In the first, the semi-intransitive ...stage, people's "interests center almost totally around survival, and they lack a sense of life on a more historic plane" (p. 17). This level of consciousness is characterized by people's preference to accept magical or external explanations for their circumstances, attributing them to a superior power or outside agents over which they have no control and therefore to which they must submit. This kind of thinking is fatalistic in nature and "fails to understand causality" (Youngman, 1986, p. 150). A central concept of Freire's model of conscientization is praxis, a cycle of action-reflection-action. It is from this process, he postulates, that people come to understand the systems of oppression within which they live and ways in which they can challenge and change those systems both individually and collectively. The move from semi-transitive consciousness to transitive consciousness to critically transitive consciousness does not occur automatically, however. Freire saw it as an educational process, one that is grounded in the experiences and daily lives of the participants, but which requires clearly identified teachers/coordinators to initiate the process. Teachers have to be concerned with social and political responsibility, and with the development of the learners to critically understand both society and their capacity to change it. Teachers and students then act as co-investigators, engaged through dialogue in the process of understanding their lives in relationship to the world. Only then can an action plan be developed to address the problems. Freire's approach to developing critical consciousness is used in a variety of settings--including universities, health clinics, and women's rape crisis centres--although the process may be modified depending on "its relevance and practical utility for participants" (Minkler & Cox, 1980, p. 312). While reading Schooling in Capitalist America (Bowles & Gintis, 1976), another of the course readings, I realized more fully the degree to which the educational system contributes to the development of consciousness and defines people's relationship to work. Bowles and Gintis note that consciousness, which includes one's beliefs, values, self-concepts, and modes of personal behavior, is developed through a person's "direct perception of and participation in social life" (p. 128). The economic sphere, family structure, and educational system are all part of that social life and, therefore, all contribute to the development of consciousness. A major role of the educational system is to reproduce consciousness so as to "maintain and extend the dominant patterns of power and privilege" (p. 126) which exist in a hierarchical society. The educational system also replicates these dominant patterns within its own organization and these are further reinforced through the social relationship of the family.
Mesenteric microvascular thrombosis may be an early pathogenic event in Crohn's disease (CD), and intravascular platelet aggregates have been identified in mucosal biopsies in ulcerative colitis ...(UC). Activated platelets are involved in thrombogenesis and exhibit inflammatory properties. In active inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) increased numbers of platelet aggregates are detectable in the peripheral circulation. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that in IBD, platelet aggregation is triggered in the mesenteric vasculature.
Platelet numbers, platelet aggregate ratios and differential leucocyte counts were compared in mesenteric arterial and venous blood obtained from paired vessels at the time of intestinal resection from 13 patients with inflammatory bowel disease and, as controls, 6 patients with colonic carcinoma or diverticular disease.
In UC and CD, but not in controls, fewer neutrophils were found in blood draining the intestine compared with that supplying it (arteriovenous gradient median 1.0 x 10(9)/l (interquartile range 0.2-1.3) for UC, P < 0.05; 0.8 (0.2-1.5) for CD, P < 0.02; 0.4 (-0.3-1.1) for controls, P = NS). In CD, increased numbers of circulating platelet aggregates were identified in venous samples (platelet aggregate ratio 0.83 (0.71-0.93)) than in paired arterial samples (0.99 (0.95-1.01), P < 0.02) and control venous samples (0.99 (0.93-0.97), P < 0.05). The mesenteric arteriovenous gradient for neutrophils in IBD reflects their migration into the extravascular tissue and lumen of the inflamed intestine. Increased circulating platelet aggregates in the mesenteric venous circulation support the hypothesis that platelet activity is stimulated in the mesenteric microcirculation in CD.
