Hey yah
Have a great birthday wherever you are!
Sorry im moving out today my internet will be suspended soon so i wont be able to talk to you. Anyhow, i hope you a great birthday and all love , luck and happiness coming your way..
Im off for the summer and will be away from keyboard as much as i can. But i will surely keepin touch and keep you posted every once in a while wherever i will be.

HAPPPPY BIRRTHHH DAYYY!!
Cheerios!
Lan Anh

Packing is frustrating but its okay. Essensial skill i need to learn and improve through practice.

Today was good. I ran to the sun and enjoyed it as much as i could.

I then folded all the clothes that i spent previous night to wash, nice and neat. Then i had dinner at an aweful chinese restaurant with some good friends. The food was not the best, the company was awesome. We then decided to take a walk to the lake where we ended up making lots of photos of pretty ducks, and of ourselves some. ON way hope, we dropped by chocolate shop..it was so tempting i bought a tobleron bar, ..

evening i talked to a special person whom bring me special thoughts and feelings. And that made me even more happy.

I talked to my mom. She is fun,informative and charming to talk as usual.Thats very good indeed.

Mitu kicked ass. Im so happy for her. Keep it up sweetie.

Im packing still and have to finish by tonight.

Current music is blackalious, Billy joel and Alive by edward.

Im sleepy and happy.

Quote for the day :
"The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose."

~ J. Martin Kohe

Me and my 2 friends plan to drive to Montreal for 3 days NEXT WEEK ( between April 24th to April 29th ). OUr budget is tight. So we are looking for someone to host us for three days. No meals needed.Floors are okay.
We just need a place to sleep inside the house. We are 2 girls and 1 boy, all Vietnamese, dont smoke nor drink,friendly and clean.=P

Email me as soon as possible if you are interested in hosting us :
angel_on_broomstick@hotmail.com

Thank you!!
Lan Anh

Welcome to the world and I hope you enjoy all the love, happiness, beautiful things in it!!

Congrats Robert and Mrs.Margolis

:)

Im good in Canada, spring's knocking,a few exams and some interesting friends keep life busy.

by Barbara Crossette

....

UNITED NATIONS—Last fall the General Assembly produced a new treaty that many would say was long overdue—the U.N. Convention Against Corruption. A few dozen countries have already signed on. But now what?

With the new convention as a weapon, and even before it is ratified by the 30 countries needed to bring it into force, a range of international and private organizations are demanding real action, not just promises from governments.

People who have spent long years looking for reasons why some countries never make it to the level of development their resources would indicate they should are now zeroing in on corruption more than ever—along with the failure to advance the rights of women—as central impediments to progress.

In the process, experts are throwing out some traditional excuses for corruption. Most no longer accept that ending corruption in the public services is as easy as paying civil servants more, so that they don't feel the need to demand bribes. Another disintegrating shibboleth is that the tiresome, time-consuming, day-to-day, small-change corruption faced by the citizens of so many countries is the acid that corrodes a whole society. Start at the top, experts say, and let the bottom take care of itself.

"Corruption is principally a governance issue—a failure of institutions and a lack of capacity to manage society by means of a framework of social, judicial, political and economic checks and balances," the U.N. Development Program says in a new guide for its representatives worldwide. The U.N. drug and crime office in Vienna also has an anti-corruption "tool kit."

The UNDP guide, called a "practice note," is full of suggestions and directions to a wealth of information accessible on the Internet. It also includes a few illustrations to indicate the scale of the problem. It points to an African country where for every dollar's worth of customs revenue actually collected, two-and-a-half times that was lost in unpaid duties, evaded through corruption; to a South Asian nation where only 15 percent of anti-poverty money actually gets to the poor; and an Arab state where corruption's share of government contracts can be as high as 70 percent.

Nine out of 10 developing countries urgently need practical support to dig out of this mess, according to the independent organization Transparency International. In March it released a list of 10 top corrupt leaders of the last quarter century. Except for former leaders of Ukraine and Yugoslavia, all were in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

It is getting easier to measure corruption, at least in general terms. Not only are international organizations building better data banks, but independent organizations are also amassing considerable evidence. Transparency International, founded by a couple of ex-World Bank officials in 1993, has over a decade steadily expanded its Corruption Perception Index, a scale based on the reports of numerous analysts covering 133 countries.

Recently, Freedom House, a New York-based organization that normally measures political and civil liberties, issued its first report on corruption, calling graft and the weak judicial systems that allow it to flourish "major impediments to the development of democracy in transitional societies."

The report, focusing on 30 "countries at the crossroads," diverges in some startling ways from the more practiced findings of Transparency International, which has chapters in more than 85 countries. In trying to factor democratic norms into the mix, Freedom House throws Malaysia into a category of "authoritarian regimes" with the likes of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Zimbabwe, and Vietnam is lumped with Uzbekistan among the world's "most politically repressive" countries. Many would disagree with these and other judgments and discount the report.

But, contentious rankings aside, what Freedom House aims to show is that corruption not only prevents development but also can undermine democracy and democratic institutions, sometimes reversing decades of gains.

Governments have proved amply that they can't be counted on to get the job of cleaning up corruption done, even with a new treaty. That is where the media, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks and even academic institutions are crucial to the campaign. Civil society, says the UNDP anti-corruption guide, plays a vital role in reshaping attitudes and reversing public apathy or tolerance for corruption. NGOs can also monitor the performance of public officials.

In Peru, for example, the Institute of Legal Defense has been watching government practices in general and in particular reports of corruption within the government of President Alejandro Toledo. (Alberto Fujimori, a former Peruvian president now in exile in Japan, is one of the 10 most corrupt officials on Transparency International's list.)

In Africa and Asia there are many corruption watchdog groups, but they often operate on very slim budgets and sometimes under harassment. In India, the Consumer Unity and Trust Society, which started out small as a consumer protection organization in a country where the adulteration of many goods by corrupt manufacturers and retailers caused untold harm, has under the leadership of its founder, Pradeep Mehta, grown in 20 years into a multi-branch movement that more broadly looks after the rights of Indians, especially the most vulnerable.

It has also moved into research and advocacy on free trade, monitoring globalization in practical ways. International trade and investment are rich new sources of corruption in many places. Often when a vague "globalization" originating somewhere else is blamed, the criticism might be better directed locally.

Significantly, CUTS has opened an Africa Resource Center in Zambia to share its experience in a pioneering example of South-South cooperation on issues of governance and economic development. This pattern of sharing experiences and tactics has also helped make Transparency International effective on every continent, allowing citizens' anti-corruption campaigns to grow in national capitals.

"Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of effects on societies," Secretary General Kofi Annan said in October, welcoming the adoption of the convention against corruption. "It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish."

He added that while every country may have corruption at some level, "it is in the developing world that its effects are most destructive."


The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/foreign/unwire/crossette2004-04-12.htm.

"..our very attitude towards other humans, toward society, and toward reality itself is severely distorted through the holding of incompatible world views, of which either one or both are incorrect. Decision making in all fields of endeavor is affected. A unifying mind-brain theory, a theory acceptable to science and the humanities and religion, must be the center point of a unifying world view, one able to eliminate the war of world views within as well as without. Not only would unifying contradictory belief systems lead to peace among human beings by providing agreed-upon basic assumptions about which a meaningful debate could occur; it would also lead to peace within human beings - and through this inner peace would emerge a more rational approach to the problems themselves." Erdmann, E., & Stover, D., (1991) "Beyond A World Divided - Human values in the Brain-Mind Science of Roger Sperry" Shambhala.

thoughts?

April 12, 2004 | Vol. 163 No. 15
Children Of The Revolution


For those who lived under communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe,
joining the E.U. next month marks the end of a bitter struggle. But for
those who've come of age since 1989, it's the start of a fantastic journey.
A look at the generation gap inside the real "New Europe"
BY ANDREW PURVIS


Peter Pazitny reads J.R.R. Tolkien, listens to massive attack, plays EyeToy
games on his PlayStation, and likes to hike, cycle and go barhopping on
weekends. In other words, he's 28. He also works 12 hours a day as an
adviser to the Slovak Ministry of Health, where he's helping to roll out a
major reform package with a scope and ambition that would shame his peers in
Western Europe. The reforms aim to balance the budget by introducing patient
contributions for care and open up the entire sector to competition. "It's a
huge challenge. I'm proud to be part of this," says Pazitny, who eschews an
office in favor of two mobile phones and a laptop computer. "We believe in
the private sector, we believe that people should take care of themselves,
and that the state should intervene only when absolutely necessary."

That's a radical creed in Central and Eastern Europe, where in most
countries the reformist zeal of the mid-1990s has given way to complacency
and partisan bickering. Politics is still an older persons' game in most of
the region, so in Slovakia they call Pazitny and his bright young cohorts
the kinder managers, using the German word for child. Apart from Pazitny,
there is Miroslav Beblavy, 27, State Secretary of the Ministry of Labor,
Social Affairs and Family; Vladimír Tvaroska, 31, State Secretary of the
Ministry of Finance; and Richard Rybnícek, 34, general director of Slovak
Television. A senior Cabinet member, Justice Minister Daniel Lipsic, is all
of 30.

As eight Central and East European nations plus Malta and Cyprus prepare to
join the European Union on May 1, Pazitny and his colleagues are engaged in
something far more serious than child's play. In addition to the health
reforms, the kinder managers are introducing the region's first "three
strikes and you're out" law that carries mandatory life sentences for people
convicted of three felonies; they've helped push through a flat 19% tax rate
for businesses and individuals; they've worked to ditch the old
pay-as-you-go pension system, and are now setting up a partially privatized
scheme instead.

Make room, Brussels: the New Europeans are coming to town. Across Central
and Eastern Europe, stiff-necked apparatchiks and stolid shift workers are
on their way out, and young, progressive politicians and risk-taking
entrepreneurs are making themselves heard. The generation that came of age
since 1989 isn't yet running the show, but it is fiercely individualistic,
competitive and outward looking - and breathing real life into the term New
Europe. When they join the E.U. next month, these children of the
postcommunist revolution will bring with them an intense curiosity and
desire to succeed, together with a firm belief in the virtues of open
borders, and a refreshing self-confidence about their place in Europe - and
Europe's place in the world. "It's their turn now," says Polish Foreign
Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz.

The enthusiasm of this new generation of young Central and East European
leaders stands in marked contrast to some of their parents, many of whom
fought for the changes now taking place but recognize that only their
children will reap the full rewards. "The benefits will not be shared
equally," says Cimoszewicz. "I can't promise my generation that their
prospects will improve, but young Poles will face fantastic opportunities."
For the older generation, E.U. enlargement is less a question of lower
tariffs and open borders than the culmination of a historical journey.
Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga takes the long view. "[We're taking]
revenge on history," she says, "by taking our rightful place in the
community of nations."

After 15 years of wrenching economic and social reforms, chronically
unstable political leadership and, more recently, dire unemployment, it's
easy to understand why some in the region are disheartened. And it's bracing
to recognize that twentysomethings like Warsaw lawyer Julek Janiszewski are
full of optimism and see joining Europe as a ticket to a better future. "The
E.U. is an inspiration, a source of new knowledge, new experience," he says
over an espresso in a fashionable Warsaw café. "Having been ostracized for
50 years, we lack professionals in every domain. The greatest opportunity is
that the best young people will leave the country for a time, then they will
return and put this country on its feet."

As a group, young Central and East Europeans work harder than their parents,
yet are more uncertain about the future; they are better educated, but less
politically engaged; they are receptive to foreign influences in culture and
politics and liberal on economic issues, but more socially conservative.
They are, in short, like E.U. analyst Rafal Rowinski, 28, of the Robert
Schuman Foundation in Warsaw, which promotes democratic reform. "Our
generation has a broader perspective," he says. "We are more flexible, open
to compromise. We believe in a unified Europe."

One of the ways this openness is expressing itself is in the demand for
education. Under communism, young Poles didn't automatically expect to go to
university; it was not seen as the only, or even the best, route to
advancement. In the 1980s, for example, only about 150,000 Poles between the
ages of 19 and 25 were working toward a degree. By the beginning of the
1990s, that number had risen to 300,000, and now some 2 million - roughly
half of all Poles between the ages of 19 and 25 - are in higher education of
some sort. Private colleges are in heated competition across the country,
while university lecturers are in heavy demand. "We are under siege," says
Krzysztof Kosela, a professor of sociology at Warsaw University. "We are
seeing more and more students apply, and they are working harder than ever.
Young people see a higher education as the key to normal life."

Demand to study abroad is also high. At Charles University in Prague, there
are four applicants for every spot in the E.U.-sponsored Erasmus
student-exchange program, which provides scholarships to study in Western
Europe. And young people know that if they want to get ahead in the new
unified Europe, they need to speak the languages. According to an E.U.
survey conducted last year, 81% of people aged 15-24 in the accession
countries believe that foreign-language skills are the most important job
qualification, compared to just 44% in the current E.U. member states; 83%
report that they already speak a foreign tongue, compared to 68% among the
E.U.'s current membership. English is the most popular, and fashionable,
lingua franca. A new advertising campaign for the Polish vodka Luksusowa
targets young consumers not with promises of hot sex or fast cars but with
free English lessons.

Those lessons were absorbed long ago by the region's emerging
entrepreneurial class. Unlike their parents, these young people see the E.U.
not as a refuge from political oppression but as a market to exploit. "The
E.U. is the best club in the world," enthuses Katia Jurgec Bricman, 35. She
quit a teaching job five years ago in Kotlje, Slovenia, to start a porcelain
business with her husband, Jure. They now produce 8,000 cups, saucers and
vases a year, many for export to Italy and France. The stability of European
markets and the eventual adoption of the euro will make it easier to plan
for the long term, says Jure. "We will be equal with other businesses in
Europe," he says. "To be equal will be enough for us, because right now we
are the Third World."

Maciej Sledzinski and Andrzej Smialek look forward to equality, too. They
met 15 years ago while studying industrial design in the picturesque
medieval Polish town of Kraków. In 1993, while they were still students,
they helped start Ergo, a firm that makes point-of-sale dispensers for
clients like Nestlé and Philip Morris, in a crumbling warehouse on the
city's outskirts. As barriers between Poland and the E.U. have fallen,
Ergo's profits have risen. The two are keenly aware that in Poland some of
their peers are already shying away from the challenges of the E.U., and not
everyone will thrive under harsher competition. "We have two speeds: one for
those who are comfortable with E.U. enlargement and modernization, and
another for those who are not," says Sledzinski. "I see the E.U. as an
opportunity. There's more competition, but we can handle that." He and
Smialek have a running start: their business is already operating abroad.

For those who don't make a successful transition, times could be tough.
Young Czechs and Poles face the highest unemployment rates in decades. The
jobless rate in Poland for people between 19 and 30 is 30%, double what it
was a decade ago, and in the Czech Republic, it's 15% for 20- to
24-year-olds. Unlike their Western neighbors, young Central and East
Europeans have little in the way of social safety nets. And young people
don't get much of a helping hand from their parents either, since family
wealth is practically nonexistent due to low incomes under communism.

The blight has consigned men like Antonín Hornák, 25, to history. An
unemployed mechanic, he lives with his wife and baby daughter in the same
attic room that he occupied as a child in an impoverished region of South
Moravia in the Czech Republic. Unable to find a permanent job, he has been
forced to take odd seasonal jobs. "I want to live in a world where jobs are
plentiful, so young people can earn a decent living and find accommodation
so it would be a joy to start a family," he says. Over beers, he and his
friends fantasize about the imagined security of communist times. "We were
born in the wrong era," he says.

Even among those with immaculate job qualifications, competition for work is
fierce. Just four years ago, Zoltán Török, 34, an economist in Budapest,
couldn't find anyone willing to take a research job at his bank for j30,000
a year, more than four times the average salary in Hungary. Last year he
posted the same job and got 15 applications within two weeks. In the 1990s,
"it was easy to make fast progress in one's career," he says. "You left
university and already qualified for middle-management positions." That's no
longer possible because there are now far fewer jobs and far more qualified
applicants. Some people blame the E.U.-mandated reforms for making a bad
situation worse. Katerina Konecná, 23, is the Czech Republic's youngest
M.P. - representing the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia. Konecná is
too young to remember the era of Soviet rule and doesn't advocate turning
back the clock, but she believes the E.U. is forcing reforms to take place
too quickly for ordinary Czechs to keep up. "Integration is necessary," she
says, "but not right now."

Konecná put herself through university by stocking supermarket shelves and
doing the odd secretarial job. Now, she says, she wants to offer "the
solidarity and social system that will support the young generation" by
building affordable apartments and increasing welfare benefits to parents.
"We are trying to give young people a chance," Konecná says. Her message is
striking a chord. Support for the Communist Party among 18- to 29-year-olds
in the Czech Republic grew from 5% to 9% over the past two years.

But Konecná is still an exception, both in her brand of politics and in the
fact that she takes an interest in the subject at all. Disgusted with the
partisan wrangling and tainted pasts of its leaders, the younger generation
has turned away from politics. Young people in the region vote in
disproportionately low numbers, and they hold their national politicians in
contempt. "They are spineless apparatchiks," scoffs Jakub Boratynski, 36,
program director of the Stefan Batory Foundation, a group promoting
democratic reform in Poland and the former Soviet bloc. "These people are
losers," he adds of the old-guard politicians running for the European
Parliament in June. In this respect at least, young Central and East
Europeans resemble their counterparts in the West.

In other respects, however, they are very different. According to an E.U.
poll, young Central and East Europeans favor capital punishment in higher
numbers than their Western counterparts, and are less enthusiastic about
same-sex marriage. In Roman Catholic Poland, the young generation still
attends church in large numbers, unlike in Western Europe, where church
membership among youth has dropped drastically over the last 20 years.
Still, young people from the new member states do share Western concerns
about the potential loss of national identity in a larger E.U. - and they're
determined to remain unique.

Young Poles, for example, dress in the same baggy trousers and tank tops as
those in the West, but they prefer Polish movies - a homegrown version of
Bridget Jones's Diary recently broke box office records - and Polish music.
"When Poles listen to Eminem they don't understand the lyrics and therefore
don't get the message," admits Izabella Miejluk, 29, marketing director for
mtv Polska. Polish artists like rapper O.S.T.R. are more popular. His hit
Poland My Love, a caustic ballad taking his country to task for selling out
to commercialism, won him a wide following. The lyrics criticize crass
consumerism, but also display national pride: "Thank you for your wisdom/
Even if I tread my own path/ I take what fate gives my life/ Made in
Poland." To meet rising demand, mtv Polska is this month bumping up its
homegrown content from about 25% to around 45%.

There are signs that many young Central and East Europeans, like their
Western peers, are starting to take the E.U. for granted. Enlargement "is
essentially a good thing," says Karolína Píchová, 27, a Czech opera singer,
who, much like her friend and colleague Barbora Polásková, has no plans to
celebrate E.U. accession. "It doesn't make one jump up and down," she says.
"That would be overdoing it." May 1 will just confirm what she already
knows: as far as joining Europe is concerned, she's already there.

With reporting by Andrzej Bobinski/Warsaw, Bruce Crumley/Paris, Samuel
Loewenberg/Ljubjana, George Mendel/ Budapest, Jan Stojaspal/Bratislava and
Katerina Zachovalová/Prague



©TIME. Printed on Saturday, April 10, 2004

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on` And how do you know that you're mad?'
`To begin with,' said the Cat, `a dog's not mad. You grant that?'
`I suppose so,' said Alice.
`Well, then,' the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.'

I had big plans for us today but now you're history
Today's a mystery you took pieces I miss of me
I keep on diggin deep tryin to find that kid in me
We had some really good discussions back then didn't we?
Befriended me but now we don't speak like we're enemies
And all I got is memories

Blackalicious

"Men get and forget, Women give and forgive."- Kouky