„Vietnam needs modern highways to help remove the country’s transportation bottlenecks, accelerate economic growth and ultimately expand economic opportunity for Vietnamese families,“ said John Cooney, a director of the ADB

At the 20th anniversary of the meeting at which the Communist Party decided to abandon state socialism, Vietnam is faced with the possibility of collapse. This had brought the country close to famine as it dealt with the consequences of war. Over the previous four decades the communists had fought the armies of France, Japan, the United States, Cambodia and China • When Vietnam’s Communist Party ended on December 18th 1986, few could have imagined the new direction the country is facing towards.

To give an example : More and more multi-national companies are trying to benefit from its young population with an economic growth of 8% a year. Something that has yet only been accomplished in an Asian country by China. Vietnam intends to become a middle income country. Still, people from the countryside are doing less well than the ones living in the cities. The numbers of 1993 said that 58% of the population was classified as being under the internationally-accepted poverty line, but that figure had fallen to less than 20% by 2004. Looking at Vietnam today it is a very different place. Free markets were introduced and in the past 10 years, Vietnam has boomed. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is described as a capitalist playground with a well-educated and well-disciplined workforce. It is currently trying to shaking off the vestiges of its war-wracked past, and faces its rapid economic growth; meeting a new generation of young Vietnamese like thirty-year-old Alan Duong who owns a chain of shops in central Hanoi where she is selling market clothes and furnishings. As a professional fashion designer, she speaks fluent English, travels around the world and is representing a part of Vietnam’s new generation of modern, successful employers who are looking up to their own future. Mentioning the word future, Vietnam has a really bright one

„It’s like a completely different country from when it was in the mid-90s“

This statement includes poorer Vietnamese people, like Nguyen Thi Ha, who lives with her husband in a village 30km away from Hanoi.

„It’s an extraordinary growth by global standards – and it’s quite rare to find anyone in Vietnam who will say they’re not better off now than they were 10 years ago,“ she said

„The dream of young people in the past was to satisfy their boss, or become a member of the Community Party – it was the dream of the servant. Now people want to speak English and French, earn lots of money and live an international lifestyle.“

There is little doubt that most Vietnamese people are optimistic about the future.

1) The debate will be presided over by Mr or Madam Chair

2) The affirmative team (side in favour) shall sit on the right hand side of the Chair; the negative (side against) on the left

3) The speaking order:
- the first affirmative will speak, then the first negative
- then the second affirmative then the second negative
- discussion period of 6 minutes
- During this time debaters will ask questions of their opponents
- Debaters wishing to ask questions ought to raise their hands
- The chairperson will call on them, endeavoring to give everyone a fair chance to question and to answer
- If a debater is answering question, he/she may ask a question of the opposing side as soon as he/she has finished his/her answer
- Only if he/she does not ask a question will the chairperson call on the next person who puts up his/her hand
- After the discussion period the first negative will deliver his/her rebuttal
- Finally the first affirmative will deliver the affirmative rebuttal
- There will be no questions after the rebuttals
- There will be an opportunity for debaters to point out any major rules violations by their opponents

4) Speaking times:
- usually 3 to 5 minutes for the major speeches
- 6 minutes for discussion
- 2 to 3 minutes for rebuttals

5) During the rebuttal speech:
- debaters may not bring up any new arguments or new evidence except in direct refutation of material which has already been presented

6) The debater should address “Mr/Madam Chair” in his/her first sentence and may address
others in the audience

7) Other debaters should be referred to in the third person
- Never referred to as “you”
- The only exception to this occurs when asking or answering
questions, in which case you do speak to your opponents directly, e.g. refer to them as
„you“

Debaters will speak only when called upon by the Chair

9) There are no points of order, privilege or heckles
- At the conclusion of the debate, the chair will ask debaters if there were any serious rules violations made by their opponents
- Debaters should not use this opportunity to bring up trivial concerns, however

10) The affirmative must define the resolution
- Their definition must be accepted unless it is undebatable or unreasonable
- If the negative wishes to challenge the definition they must do so in the first negative speech
- The negative must show that the affirmative’s definition is unacceptable and then substitute their own
- They continue to argue the negative side

11) If the debate is a policy debate : (i.e. when the affirmative comes up with a plan
or method of implementing the resolution)
- the negative may choose to propose a counter-plan
- A counter-plan is a significantly different way of carrying out the resolution
- If the negative does this, the debate becomes an argument about which is the better plan

12) Props (e.g. drawings, models) may not be used

13) Courtesy must be shown to all other debaters at all times

14) When questioning, the questioner should ask questions rather than make speeches
- He/she may not insist on a yes or no answer
- He/she may not ask any questions of a personal nature

15) The debater being questioned must answer any questions, regardless of apparent
relevance, as long as the questions are not of a personal nature
- He/she may request that the question be clarified but should not use this as a delaying tactic
- Stalling will be penalized
- Answers should not be longer than a sentence or two

<!–[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 21 <![endif]–>

Debate Rules for Use in American English

Argument Agreement and Disagreement

- a practical „yes-no“- question

-two sides: opposition/ proponents

-team will be graded as a whole (“you will be as strong as your weakest link”)

-work together

all members should have an adequate background of the positions,arguments that you will be proposing

For Proponents

• choose a definitive formulation of the thesis you are proposing
• communicate this formulation to your opponents at least several days beforehand
• proponents and opponents should be clear about the thesis that is being debated
• State this formulation at the beginning, the end of your presentation, and several times in the middle
• The audience should be clear about the thesis that is being debated
• Make it clear what the theoretical background of your argument is
• Attempt to trap your opponent, by anticipating his arguments beforehand and showing what is wrong with them.
• Do not be afraid to use visual aids (blackboard, handouts, overhead projector) to make your point

For Proponents and Opponents

• • Include a conclusion in which you demonstrate how you have established or refuted the thesis
  • Avoid lengthy and repetitive presentations of facts or stories
  • Avoid mouthing a familiar party-line
  • Concentrate on arguments and on thinking through to basic presuppositions
  • Use notes
  • If you attempt to write out every word of your presentation beforehand it will sound wooden
  • Speak loudly and clearly
  • address your remarks to the audience
  • Speak confidently; always sound as if you believe absolutely in what you are saying
  • Always prepare more notes than you think you will need
  • If you think you have said enough, move directly to your conclusion
  • Do not leave the audience with the impression that you have not said enough
  • Leave your personal views and your personal experiences out of account; what is important is exclusively the quality of your arguments
  • Never concede that you agree with the other side or suggest compromise positions
  • Preserve a clear opposition between the views of proponents and opponents throughout

• • Use radical and imaginative gambits to keep the attention and sympathy of your audience
  • For example: pretend to agree with almost everything the opposing side says, but then reveal how what your opponents say implies that they are in fact quite wrong

Or use the method of reductio ad absurdum (i.e. show that, if the opposing side were correct, then this would have absurd consequences)

„Utopia“ is depicted as the fundament of utopian literature wherein ideal socities and the image of a „perfect world“ is pictured. The genre is often compared with science fiction novels because it takes place in the future, unlike More´s „Utopia“.

* Lenina is obsessed with John

* conversation between Lenina and Fanny who encourages her to do the first step

* after she has taken soma she´s willing to do so

* she tries to come up to John who refuses

* he wants to „earn“ her love; show that he´s „worthy“ of her

* Lenina is confused and also mad because he refuses her

* Lenina is unable to express her feelings and can´t find the right words for describing her emotions

* they are misunderstanding each other

* John is having an outburst and attacks her in his blind fury

* Lenina tries to escape by shutting in herself into the bathroom

* John receives a call and leaves

Chapter thirteen basically deals with the definition of „love“ based on different perspectives, in this case Lenina and Johns. To Lenina „love“ is first of all a desire, physically. Because of her conditioning she isn´t able to experience love to the fullest. A lack of emotions is mainly the reason why she is having another view on love. When something like „lovesickness“ occures (she is longing for John) she believes she is sick because she hasn´t experienced a desire like this before. This may also be the reason for her longing after John to be so strong; she really wants to „have“ him. When she finally reaches the point where she gets impatient, she resigns to her friend Fanny who finally encourages her to do the first step. After having taken soma she loses any sense of shame and fear. In this condition she is ready to approach John.

When Lenina enters his room she is trying to get any closer to him but John who has a completly different view on love, refuses. In this case the role of Shakepeare is very important. John identifies himself with Shakespeare´s heroes. To him, Lenina is his Juliet but they can´t be together as in real „Romeo and Juliet“. He thinks he has to „do something“; he thinks he has to earn her love before they can get any further. John is overwhelmed by his feelings and can´t stop quoting Shakespeare. Lenina on the other hand is confused and can´t even find the words for describing her emotional condition. On balance they are both misunderstanding eachother which finally causes John having an outburst (like Othello). In his blind fury he attacks Lenina.

John will never find his luck or real love in the New World; ´he as someone who was born and raised in a totally different world, and under different conditions (view on religion and culture). He is so strongly affected by Shakespeare that he clings to the values of Shakepearian gentleman, and therefor he has a different opinion and view on love.

By doing researches concerning the reasons and benefits of migration we learned how the treatment of those workers is to be managed in different countries and also that working and living conditions are important aspects. Migrant workers are on the one hand seasonal workers but also stay temporary at a place. Working on fields and in agricultural productions, allows them to send home their wages, which are often low pays, but still a support for their families back home. We also report about different cases of abuse, especially on women and in generell how migrant workers often get exploited.

Of course the whole topic has a huge amount of given informations, facts, numbers and dates, we decided to set a limit, by refering to Asia, especially Chinese migrant workers. On the one hand Asian workers in America (Asian Americans) but also on the other hand, workers in Asia. We tried to refer to a current topic and by that found the case study: Olympic Games 2008.

Be it the news or any other television, during the time of the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing, people actually never got confronted with the topic „migrant workers in China“. About 90% of the Olympic builders were migrant workers from other Asian countries but nobody cared about their living or working conditions during this time. By tiping in terms like „migrant workers“ and „Olympic Games 2008″ you directly get a link to the official homepage of „Olympic Games in Beijing“. There of course the hosts and other person in charge tried to present a good image, especially in terms of „migrant workers“. They uploaded pictures of smiling workers while they were working on huge buildings like the „water cube“ or their food and dormitory supplies. But this is only a given view on the positive aspects, which weren´t accomplished for all workers! Our conclusion is basically that during our research and actuall working process we received only negative views in terms of „treatment on migrant workers“ (most of the time). Also the American view of Asian migrant workers again cast a damning light on America dealing with the term migrant workers. America as a nation of immigration was a most occured aspect during our research and actuall presentation.

by Marina Z. & Mi T.

„A great short story may be brief, but it demands and relies upon personal investment from the reader. I believe this is why the very best short stories can haunt you long after you’ve read the concluding line, because so much of the experience is not just about the words on the page, but is individual to you and the way your own brain interprets and digests what you’ve read. There’s something magical about that.“ Clare Wigfall

British writer Clare Wigfall was born in Greenwich in 1976. She grew up in Berkeley, California, and London and began writing at an early age. After being an assistant and editor to the late President of Mensa, she graduated from The University of Manchester in 1998.

Clare Wigfall temporarily visited places like Prague, Morocco, Spain and Norwich after she finally decided to settle in Prague and lived there for nine years (currently she is living in Germany, Berlin).

As well as teaching creative writing and running a face-painting and clown company and a community figure-drawing workshop, she wrote her first book called „The Loudest Sound and Nothing“ (published by Faber and Faber, 2007).

When she was twenty-one, an editor from „Faber and Faber“ visited her university and afterwards read one of her short story she’d written. The next day he immediately called her, to send for „more stuff“ but at that time she’d just finished two other stories, but she sent him those. Only a week later she got a request on writing a book for „Faber and Faber“ and the best part was that the decision about its subject and form was left to her, which is a great and also unusual opportunity. The result is to be found in „The Loudest Sound and Nothing„- a collection of „disturbing and darkly provocative short stories”.

The question still : why writing a collection of short stories instead of a novel? The answer was given in an interview taken place from her new home in Berlin.

What is the difference between writing short stories and full-length novels?

„One aspect I appreciate is the economy of the form; the story must create a world, a mood, a plot, wholly-real characters, an exploration of life and its complexities, and all within the space of only a few pages. There’s something almost beautifully mathematical and precise about it, and what you leave out is as important as what you leave in. For that reason, I suppose in a way your safety net is taken away, because when you write a short story you’re relying on an unknown quantity: your reader. With a novel you have the space to fill in all the gaps, with a short story you’re forced to leave these for your reader to complete“ [...]

About the book (from the Faber jacket-notes):

One long hot summer, Eveline drowns a wasp nest, and while digging amongst the tiny corpses makes a sinister discovery. A university professor arrives unannounced at the door of an Arizona fortune-teller, little knowing how this woman will alter his life. A sudden spate of disappearing new-borns terrifies a young mother. As the Prussian army encroaches, the besieged city of Paris asks an enormous sacrifice of its city zookeeper. And over a Coca-Cola in an Andalusian village bar, a woman hears from a stranger the worst thing a mother can do.

„The characters in Clare Wigfall’s stories are all searching for something missing, something absent. As they go about their seemingly ordinary lives, the dark undercurrent of life, with all its complications and imperfections, is gradually revealed. Extraordinarily compelling, incredibly skilled and pitch perfect in tone, these stories mark Clare Wigfall as a debut writer of enormous talent.“

After getting the task to do researches as per theme „You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.“ ( I’m happy about it afterwards) and to find out more about the writer Clare Wigfall, I am really curious about meeting her. While I was doing my research I first noticed, if you type in her name and “google” it, you won’t find “wikipedia” listed up on top of the search results, which is kind of “unusual” nowadays =)

Therefore I was more surprised to see her name on “myspace” which I think is definitely more personal than a dry entry at wikipedia.

I think it’s a great pleasure listen to a young writer who is telling you about her experiences not only in writing but , somehow as a “chart breaker”. What kind of issues she has to proof wrong concerning short stories or the fact that she is pretty young, just to refer to what she said during an interview “I feel I have a lot to discover”. How her writing process looks like and of course her reaction about her success, as her book was recently long listed for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Also I would like to know what kind of things inspires her and where she, as someone who still has a soft spot for J.D. Salinger’s work, gets these inspiration.

Finding out that she loves the stories of J.D. Salinger and (I guess) artist´s work of Jan Vermeer, makes her even more sympathetic and I am really looking forward to meet her soon.

The transport ship first „Graf Goetzen“ was built in 1914 and is named after the German African-explorer. In 1913 the German Emperor Wilhelm II started with that project to support the German troops in the African colonies. The thing that now strikes you is that the building of the now named „Liemba“ was similiar to a kit because the whole ship was fragmented into pieces of about 5000 boxes. After three Papenburger engineers put all the pieces together, the „Liemba“ was involved in miscellaneous attaks.

Now the known as the „Liemba“ is probably the world´s oldest passenger ship.

Julius Kambarage Nyerere

(April,13 1922 – October,14 1999 )

Was first President of Tanzania (previously Tanganyika), from the country’s founding in 1964 until his retirement in 1985. He studied in Edinburgh and was the first Tanzanian to study at a British university and only the second, who gained a university degree outside of Africa He took a position in teaching and because of these activities, he was forced to choosebetween his political activities or his teaching – he resigned from teaching and was reported as saying that he was a schoolmaster by choice and a politician by accident.During his economic policies he introduced a policy of Collectivization in the country’s agriculture system – Ujamaa or “family hood”. He believed that life should be structured around “Ujamaa”.It was known that Nyerere had faith in rural African people and their traditional values and their way of life. In his opinion, Africans were already, recently, socialist, and all they needed to do was to return to their traditional “roots”, their traditional mode of life and they would regain it. In 1999 Julius Kambarage Nyere, also known as Father of the Nation, died because of leukemia in London and was buried in Musoma, Tanzania.

Chancellor Angela Merkel

Chancellor Angela Merkel in Africa

„Together we can work for the development of the African continent and we can ensure that fewer people have to live in poverty“ Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters prior to her takeoff for the continent. The Chancellor’s journey will take her on a five-day trip to Ethiopia, South Africa and Liberia to meet with some of the continent’s political and social leaders.

President Bush

Is he always wearing the „Against Aids-button“ ?

No, he´s not ! >>

Kids don´t really look happy, do they

-free trade

-blood diamonds

-civil wars

-illegal weapon trade

-slavery

-Sierra Leone

-Liberia

-Congo

-Antwerp

-Angola

-UN

-RUF ( Revolutionary United Front)

-“diamonds are for ever“

-“diamons are a girls best friens“

-Greg Campbell: Tödliche Steine. Der globale Diamantenhandel und seine Folgen

So as you can see this is my short version of a brainstorming concerning the Facharbeit´s topic. Since last year I got really interested in the topic „blood diamonds“ ,and  along with that its background history. So I started to „google“ a lot and read whatever I found that might be interesting. I also got myself a book by Greg Campbell which basically deals with this scope. It was clear for me at the very beginning that I would like to write my Facharbeit about the topic „blood diamonds“ perhaps based on the book.