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Lesson Nine. Iraq: Who won the war?

Not the 90,000 Iraqi civilians or the 4,200 US and UK troops killed since 2003. The big winners are the money men who have made billions.

Raymond Whitaker and Stephen Foley report

1.Five years ago today, Britain stood on the brink of war. On 16 March 2003, United Nations

weapons inspec-tors were advised to leave Iraq within 48 hours, and the "shock and awe" bombing campaign began less than 100 hours later, on 20 March. The moment the neocons around President George Bush had worked so long for, aided by the moral fervour of Tony Blair, was about to arrive.

2."I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk,"

Kenneth Adelman, a leading neocon, had said a few weeks before, and so it proved. Within barely a month, Saddam's bronze statue in Baghdad's Firdaus Square was scrap metal. But every other prediction by the Bush administration's hawks proved wrong.

3.No weapons of mass destruction –Britain's key justification for war –have been found. The

Pentagon acknowledged last week that a review of more than 600,000 captured Iraqi documents showed "no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida terrorist network".

4.In 2008, there are still more American troops in Iraq than during the invasion, with no exit yet in

sight. Britain's Ministry of Defence has just admitted that it has been unable to withdraw as many British troops as it planned – there are 4,000 still based just outside Basra, instead of the projected 2,500. So far 3,987 American soldiers and 197 British troops have died in Iraq.

5.So, five years on, who can be said to have won the war? Certainly not Iraqi civilians, at least

90,000 of whom have died violently since 2003, at the most conservative estimate. Other studies have multiplied that figure by five or six. Two million Iraqis have fled the country, and at least as many again are internally displaced. Baghdad households suffered power cuts of up to eight hours a day in Saddam's time; now they can expect less than eight hours of electricity a day on average. The US troop "surge" has cut the number of murders, but there are still 26 a day in the capital. The list goes on.

6.Nor have the eager promotors of the war, such as Mr Adelman, fared well. (By October 2006 he

was admitting: "We're losing in Iraq.") The most arrogant of them all, Donald Rumsfeld, the ex-secretary of defence, was reluctantly dropped by Mr Bush in his second term. His former deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who famously said that WMD had been used as the excuse for war because it was the only topic Washington's bureaucracy could agree on, was forced to resign as president of the World Bank after arranging a pay rise for his girlfriend. The Senate refused to confirm John Bolton

as US ambassador to the UN.

7.George Bush is the most unpopular President since opinion polls began, mainly because of Iraq.

Tony Blair, his partner in the reckless venture, has already gone; those in a position to know believe he would still be Prime Minister had it not been for the war. The standing of both Britain and the US has suffered immeasurably, and the international scepticism engendered by manipulation of the evidence on WMD has hampered efforts to deal with nuclear threats from the likes of North Korea.

8.The main winners of the war are not the ones its instigators planned: Iran and al-Qa'ida. No one

in Washington appeared to have calculated that to unseat Saddam, whom the US once supported as

a bulwark against the Iranians, would empower the majority community in Iraq, the Shias, or that

many of them would look to the world's only Shia nation, Iran. The US insists that Tehran retains nuclear ambitions, despite its own intelligence estimate that work on a weapon has stopped, but its occupation of Iraq has given Iran a hostage it could never have imagined having.

9.As for al-Qa'ida, it never had a foothold in Iraq until the chaos created by the invasion gave it

the opportunity to establish one. And while the US is preoccupied in Iraq, the conflict it neglec ted, in Afghanistan, is getting worse. Al-Qa'ida has re-established itself in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, while its old host, the Taliban, regains ground on the other side of the Afghan border.

10.In early 2003, Mr Rumsfeld mused on what might be the cost of the war to come: $50bn (￡25bn)

or $60bn, he and White House planners thought. Five years on, the bill is already 10 times that, while here the Commons Defence Committee has just warned of a "surprising" 52 per cent increase in the cost of operations in Iraq to nearly ￡1.45bn in the current financial year, despite the reductions in troop levels. An unprecedented amount has been funnelled to the private sector. The big winners have been the money men.

11.Another army of private security guards escorts convoys, protects infrastructure projects and

ferries military equipment around Iraq. These have been followed by business consultants, building project planners and government advisers, many of whom have put their lives at risk in the pursuit of a reconstructed Iraq while their companies earn billions.

12.An estimate last October put the number of private contractors working in Iraq at 160,000 from

up to 300 separate companies. About 50,000 were private security guards from companies such as Blackwater – whose killing of 17 Iraqi civilians last September in a gun battle shone a spotlight on the US military's reliance on poorly controlled private armies. Each Blackwater guard in Iraq, of whom there have been up to 900, costs the US government $445,000 per year.

13.British firms have also been operating in Iraq. After courting controversy in the Nineties, Tim

Spicer –whose previous company, Sandline International, was accused of breaking a United Nations embargo by selling arms to Sierra Leone – has re-emerged as a powerful player with his latest venture, Aegis Defence Services. Aegis won a $293m Pentagon contract in 2004, which has

since been extended, and employs more than 1,000 contractors in the country. Another British company, Global Strategies, which calls itself a "political and security risk-management company", employs cheaper Fijian contractors for its Iraq operations.

14.At one point, ArmorGroup, chaired by the former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, was

getting half its revenues from Iraq. It carried out convoy protection at rates estimated at between $8,000 and $12,000 a day, and helped to guard polling stations during the country's elections. By far the biggest winner of contracts in Iraq, though, is Halliburton, the oil and related services company run by Dick Cheney before he became US vice-president and a key architect of the war. The connections between the company and the Bush administration helped to generate $16bn in contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan in the three years from the start of 2004 – nine times as much as any other company. Halliburton decided last year to spin off the division operating in Iraq. That business, KBR, has generated half its revenues there each year since the invasion, providing private security to the military and infrastructure projects and advising on the rebuilding of the country's oil industry.

15.The Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, which tracks Iraqi contracts in its

investigation "Windfalls of War", says the total value of contracts tendered by the US government in Iraq rose 50 per cent each year from 2004 to 2006. That had been planned to slow in 2007, but KBR said recently that the US military "surge" meant more business than previously expected.

After KBR, the US security contractor DynCorp secured the most work, worth $1.8bn over the three years to the end of 2006.

16.Many of the biggest contract winners have extensive lobbying budgets and funds for targeting

political donations. Public records show that BearingPoint, the consulting firm appointed to advis e on the economic reconstruction of Iraq, has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers, including $117,000 to the two Bush presidential campaigns. The company is being paid $240m for its work in Iraq, winning an initial contract from the US Agency for International Development (USAid) within weeks of the fall of Saddam. It was charged with supporting the then Coalition Provisional Authority to introduce policies "which are designed to create a competitive private sector".

https://www.360docs.net/doc/2c18352720.html,st year, The IoS revealed that a BearingPoint employee based at the US embassy in Baghdad

was involved in drafting the controversial hydrocarbon law that was approved by Iraq's cabinet last March. The legislation opens up the country's oil reserves to foreign corporations for the first time since 1972.

18.Western companies will be able to pocket up to three-quarters of profits from new drilling

projects in their early years. Supporters say it is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through

"production-sharing agreements", which are highly unusual in the Middle East; the oil industries of Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, are state-controlled.

19.So far, major companies such as Shell, BP and ExxonMobil have held back on investing directly

in the country while the violence continues – but the war has still contributed handsomely to their record-breaking profits because of sky-high oil prices. As the US prepared to march into Iraq, crude soared to what then seemed an impossibly high $37 a barrel. Last week it reached a record $110. 20.The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the war has added between $5

and $10 a barrel to the price of oil. The figure could be higher, if one believes that the rise also reflects a big additional premium for the threat of future supply disruptions that might be caused by geopolitical tensions or increased terrorist activity in oil-producing regions – any of which might be traced back to the passions inflamed by the war. (The Independent, March 16, 2008)

Questions:

1.On what pretext did the US and Britain launch the Iraq War?

2.Why do you think the writer says ―the international skepticism engendered by manipulation of

the evidence on WMD has hampered efforts to deal with nuclear threats from the likes of North Korea‖?

3.Why does the writer say that Iraqi people are not the winner?

4.Who really profits from the Iraq War? Can you just name a few?

5.Why do you think oil price rose rapidly during the Iraq War and the US military occupation in

Iraq?

6.What is the relationship between the biggest contract winners and the party in power?

Lesson Ten.

The Coming Conflict in the Arctic

Russia and US to Square Off Over Arctic Energy Reserves by Vladimir Frolov

1.Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush spent most of their time at

the ―lobster summit‖ at Kennebunkport, Maine, discussing how to prevent the growing tensions

between their two countries from getting out of hand. The media and international affairs experts have been portraying missile defense in Europe and the final status of Kosovo as the two most contentious issues between Russia and the United States, with mutual recriminations over ―democracy standards‖ providing the background for the much anticipated onset of a new Cold War.

But while this may well be true for today, the stage has been quietly set for a much more serious confrontation in the non-too-distant future between Russia and the United States –along with Canada, Norway and Denmark.

2.Russia has recently laid claim to a vast 1,191,000 sq km (460,800 sq miles) chunk of the

ice-covered Arctic seabed. The claim is not really about territory, but rather about the huge hydrocarbon reserves that are hidden on the seabed under the Arctic ice cap. These newly discovered energy reserves will play a crucial role in the global energy balance as the existing reserves of oil and gas are depleted over the next 20 years.

3.Russia has the world‘s large st gas reserves and is the second largest exporter of oil after Saudi

Arabia, but its oil and gas production is slated to decline after 2010 as currently operational reserves dwindle. Russia‘s Natural Resources Ministry estimates that the country‘s existin g oil reserves will be depleted by 2030.

4.The 2005 BP World Energy Survey projects that U.S. oil reserves will last another 10 years if

the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not opened for oil exploration, Norway‘s reserves are good for about seven years and British North Sea reserves will last no more than five years – which is why the Arctic reserves, which are still largely unexplored, will be of such crucial importance to the world‘s energy future. Scientists estimate that the territory contains more than 10 billion tons of gas and oil deposits. The shelf is about 200 meters (650 feet) deep and the challenges of extracting oil and gas there appear to be surmountable, particularly if the oil prices stay where they are now – over $70 a barrel.

5.The Kremlin wants to secure Russia‘s long-term dominance over global energy markets. To

ensure this, Russia needs to find new sources of fuel and the Arctic seems like the only place left to go. But there is a problem: International law does not recognize Russia‘s rig ht to the entire Arctic seabed north of the Russian coastline.

6.The 1982 International Convention on the Law of the Sea establishes a 12 mile zone for

territorial waters and a larger 200 mile economic zone in which a country has exclusive drilling rights for hydrocarbon and other resources.

7.Russia claims that the entire swath of Arctic seabed in the triangle that ends at the North Pole

belongs to Russia, but the United Nations Committee that administers the Law of the Sea Convention has so far refused to rec ognize Russia‘s claim to the entire Arctic seabed.

8.In order to legally claim that Russia‘s economic zone in the Arctic extends far beyond the 200

mile zone, it is necessary to present viable scientific evidence showing that the Arctic Ocean‘s sea shelf to the north of Russian shores is a continuation of the Siberian continental platform. In 2001, Russia submitted documents to the UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf seeking to push Russia‘s maritime borders beyond the 200 mile zone. It was r ejected.

9.Now Russian scientists assert there is new evidence that Russia‘s northern Arctic region is

directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf. Last week a group of Russian geologists returned from a six-week voyage to the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater shelf in Russia‘s remote eastern Arctic Ocean. They claimed the ridge was linked to Russian Federation territory, boosting Russia‘s claim over the oil- and gas-rich triangle.

10.The latest findings are likely to prompt Russia to lodge another bid at the UN to secure its rights

over the Arctic sea shelf. If no other power challenges Russia‘s claim, it will likely go through unchallenged.

11.But Washington seems to have a different view and is seeking to block the anticipated Russian

bid. On May 16, 2007, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made a statement encouraging the Senate to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention, as the Bush Administration wants. The Reagan administration negotiated the Convention, but the Senate refused to ratify it for fear that it would unduly limit the U.S. freedom of action on the high seas.

12.The United States has been jealous of Russia‘s attempts to project its dominance in the energy

sector and has sought to limit opportunities for Russia to control export routes and energy deposits outside Russia‘s territory. But the Arctic shelf is something that Russia has traditionally regarded as its own. For decades, international powers have pressed no claims to Russia‘s Arctic sector for obvious reasons of remoteness and inhospitability, but no longer.

13.Now, as the world‘s major economic powers brace for the battle for the last barrel of oil, it is not

surprising that the United States would seek to intrude on Russia‘s ho me turf. It is obvious that Moscow would try to resist this U.S. intrusion and would view any U.S. efforts to block Russia‘s claim to its Arctic sector as unfriendly and overtly provocative. Furthermore, such a policy would actually help the Kremlin justif y its hardline position. It would certainly prove right Moscow‘s assertion that U.S. policy towards Russia is really driven by the desire to get guaranteed and privileged access to Russia‘s energy resources.

14.It promises to be a tough fight. (from Global Research, July 17, 2007)

Questions:

1.What issues would the two heads of states discuss at the Lobster Summit at Kennebunkport?

2.What‘s the real purpose of Russia‘s claim to the vast area of the ice-covered Arctic seabed?

3.Why are the Arctic reserves so attractive to Arctic-rim countries?

4.Why doesn‘t International law recognize Russia‘s right to the entire Arctic seabed north of the

Russian coastline?

5.What is the viable scientific evidence supporting Russia‘s claim? What has boosted Russia‘s claim

over the oil-and-gas-rich triangle?

6.What is the US government‘s attitude to the Russian claim? Why did President Bush urge the

Senate to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention?

7.Why did the author say that it promises to be a tough fight?

Lesson Eleven

A Witness From Australia's 'Stolen Generation'

By Michael Richardson, Published: Saturday, New York Times, September 16, 2000

1.In 1942, when John Kundereri Moriarty was 4 years old and living happily in an

Aboriginal tribal community in northern Australia, he was taken from his family. It happened like a kidnapping, he recalled in an interview. "My mum went to pick me up from school and

I wasn't there,"he said. "We had been loaded on the backs of army lorries. Then we were

transported south through Alice Springs."

2.Moriarty, now a designer, is a part of the so-called stolen generation of Aborigines,

Australia's indigenous minority. From 1910 until the 1970's, about 100,000 Aborigine children — many, like Moriarty, of mixed Aboriginal and European parentage — were taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on the premise that Aborigines were a doomed race and that saving the children by putting them into foster homes and providing them with Western education was the humane alternative.

3.Aborigines don't see it that way. "It was an insidious, arrogant policy that amounted to

cultural genocide," Moriarty wrote in an autobiography, "Saltwater Fella," published this year by Viking Penguin. "It was the stuff Hitler was made of, the things he espoused that are seen as abhorrent today."

4.A national inquiry found in 1997 that many stolen-generation children were abused and

suffered long-term psychological effects stemming from loss of family and cultural connections. It concluded that almost all of the 386,000 Aborigines alive today had been affected in some negative way by the separations.

5.The government has refused to make an official apology for past wrongs against

Aborigines, including the forced removal of children from their families. Prime Minister John Howard, for one, argues that it is unfair to expect the current generation of Australians to apologize for abuses they had nothing to do with, and that it is more important to look forward than backward.

6.That stand has angered many Aborigines. Some militant leaders have said they will

organize protests throughout the summer Olympic games, which opened Friday, to draw attention to their cause.

7.Nearly 10 years passed before Moriarty was able to re-establish contact with his mother

by letter. Meanwhile, his Irish father had left her and had died. Mother and son finally met again in Alice Springs, in central Australia, when he was 15 and had been cared for and schooled as a ward of the state by several Christian institutions and government schools near Sydney and in Adelaide.

8."That meeting with my mother began to complete the jigsaw puzzle," he wrote. "It was

the piece I needed to make myself feel whole as an individual and move onward. I realized much later in life that lack of identity was what a lot of the Aboriginal kids that I was brought up with suffered from. They didn't know who their real family was and what their tribal relationships were and what they should've been.

9."Some have become alcoholics and some have died premature deaths. Maybe it is a little

simplistic, but part of me wonders whether they got into difficulties because they couldn't find the inner serenity that would enable them to take pride in their Aboriginal heritage." 10.Moving onward for Moriarty meant, in part, finding a path to social acceptance in this

predominantly white society through paid employment, and achieving distinction first in sport and then education. In a sports-mad country, "I found that once you become known a little, you are more accepted in all sorts of areas, including with girlfriends," he wrote. He worked as a mechanic at an Adelaide power station, played soccer for the state of South Australia, was selected to play in the national team and became the first Aborigine to graduate from a university.

11.With other Aborigines and their non-Aboriginal supporters, Moriarty also campaigned

for an end to racial discrimination here and the establishment of affirmative-action programs to improve the welfare of indigenous Australians and bring more Aborigines into the work force through better education and training.

12.He confesses to being somewhat disappointed with the results, despite all the money and

effort expended. "I think that a lot of the goodwill on both sides is turning sour in some ways," he said. "A lot of taxpayers' money has been spent on programs managed by Aborigines to help Aboriginal people. But there has been much wastage, and a good deal of animosity is directed at that." Comprising about 2.1 percent of Australia's 19 million population, Aborigines remain the most disadvantaged group in Australian society in terms of health, life expectancy, education, housing and job prospects.

13.Moriarty said that one of the reasons he wrote "Saltwater Fella," now in its fourth

printing, was in the hope that it would be read by Australians and people overseas. "Australia is a great country with a promising future," he said. "But it does not have a good history of race relations. We should acknowledge that as a basis for working together in future to make

a better multi-cultural society."

14.Moriarty —who this year was awarded the Order of Australia, the country's highest

civil medal of honor — said he hoped that the book would also show young Aborigines from disadvantaged backgrounds that it is possible, through hard work and determination, to be successful while keeping a hold on their identity and culture.

15.Moriarty heads the National Aboriginal Sports Corporation of Australia and is

vice-chairman of an organization that provides venture capital to Aboriginal enterprises. He said he wanted to see more Aborigines take leadership roles in business, the professions, education and politics. For example, only one Aborigine is a member of Parliament.

16.Cathy Freeman, who is strongly favored to win the gold medal in the women's 400

meters at the Sydney games, said that Moriarty is "one of the people I turn to when I want to find out more about the pathway Aboriginal people have followed to this point of our history in Australia."

17.In 1983 Moriarty established the Balarinji Design Studio in Adelaide with his white

Australian wife, Ros, to promote Aboriginal heritage through contemporary design.

18.One of its best known designs is painted on a Boeing 747 of Qantas airline that flies

regularly to the United States and Europe. It is called the Wunala Dreaming plane. "Wunala"

is the generic word for kangaroo in the Y anyuwa tribal language.

19.The design depicts the movement of the Kangaroo Spirit people across the Australian

landscape when it was being formed, eons ago in the Aboriginal Dreamtime. It shows the pattern of movement over the country — bestowing the rich colors of the landscape, from the orange sunsets to the green grass and the red earth.

20."Not many people can truly understand the spirituality of Aboriginal culture, how it

relates through design to people and to the formation of the land," Moriarty said. "But I like

to think that people are coming to understand it little by little through our art."

(from International Herald Tribune, Sep. 16-17, 2000)

Questions:

1.How was John Moriarty ―stolen‖ from his parents?

2.What was the reason that many Aborigine children were taken away from their parents?

3.Why did the then Australian authorities adopt such a policy?

4.What is John Howard‘s stand on the past?

5.Why did some of the stolen Aborigines become alcoholics or die premature death?

6.What do you think of Mr. Moriarty and the Aborigines‘ future?

Lesson Twelve

Ahead-of-the-Curve Careers

By Marty Nemko

1.Cutting-edge careers are often exciting, and they offer a strong job market. Alas, the cutting

edge too often turns out to be the bleeding edge, so here are some careers that, while relatively new, are already viable and promise further growth. They emerge from six megatrends:

2.Growing healthcare demand. The already overtaxed U.S. healthcare system will be forced

to take on more patients because of the many aging baby boomers, the influx of immigrants, and

the millions of now uninsured Americans who would be

covered under a national healthcare plan likely to be enacted in

the next president's administration. Jobs should become more

available in nearly all specialties, from nursing to coding,

imaging to hospice. These healthcare careers are likely to be

particularly rewarding. Health informatics specialists will, for example, develop expert systems to help doctors and nurses make evidence-based diagnoses and treatments. Hospitals, insurers, and patient families will hire patient advocates to navigate the labyrinthine and ever more parsimonious healthcare system. On the preventive side, people will move beyond personal trainers to wellness coaches, realizing that doing another 100 pushups won't help if they're smoking, boozing, and enduring more stress than a rat in an experiment.

3.The increasingly digitized world. Americans are doing more of their shopping on the Net.

We obtain more of our entertainment digitally: Computer games are no longer just for teenage boys; billions are spent by people of all ages and both sexes. Increasingly, we get our information from online publications (just look where you're reading this), increasingly viewed on iPhones and BlackBerrys. An under-the-radar career that is core to the digital enterprise is data miner. Online customers provide enterprises with high-quality data on what to sell and for individualized marketing. Another star of the digitized world is simulation developer. The growing ubiquity of broadband connectivity is helping entertainment, education, and training to incorporate simulations of exciting, often dangerous experiences. For example, virtual patients allow medical students to diagnose and treat without risking a real patient's life. A new computer game, Spore, allows you to simulate creating a new planet, starting with the first microorganism.

4.Globalization, especially Asia's ascendancy. This should create great demand for business

development specialists, helping U.S. companies create joint ventures with Chinese firms. Once those deals are made, offshoring managers are needed to oversee those collaborations as well as the growing number of offshored jobs. Quietly, companies are offshoring even work previously deemed too dependent on American culture to send elsewhere: innovation and market research, for example. Conversely, large numbers of people from impoverished countries are immigrating to the United States. So, immigration specialists of all types, from marketing to education to criminal justice, will be needed to attempt to accommodate the unprecedented in-migration.

5.The dawn of clinical genomics. Decades of basic research are finally starting to yield

clinical implications. Just months ago, it cost $1 million to fully decode a person's genome. Now it's $300,000 and just $1,000 for a partial decoding, which, in itself, indicates whether a person is at increased risk of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, and 15 other conditions. Within a decade, we will probably understand which genes predispose humans to everything from depression to violence, early death to centenarian longevity, retardation to genius. Such discoveries will most likely give rise to ways to prevent or cure our dreaded predispositions and encourage those in which we'd delight. That, in turn, will bring about the reinvention of psychology, education, and, of course, medicine. In the meantime, the unsung heroes who will bring this true revolution to pass will include computational biologists and behavioral geneticists.

6.Environmentalism. Growing alarm about global warming is making environmentalism this

generation's dominant initiative. The most influential panel on the topic, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the most visible advocate of curbing carbon emissions, former Vice President Al Gore, shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for insisting that vigorous action is needed.

The environmental wave is creating jobs in everything from sales to accounting in companies making green products, regulatory positions in government, and grant writing, fundraising, and litigation work in nonprofits. Among the more interesting green careers, thousands of engineers

are working on such projects as hydrogen-powered cars, more efficient solar cells, and coal pollution sequestration systems. But those jobs require very high-level training and skills and are at risk of being offshored. In contrast, so-called green-collar consulting is offshore resistant and often requires less demanding training (for example, learning how to do green-building audits). It is a worthy option for people who love novelty and don't want to be stuck in the same office every day, for years. Many environmental consultants are peripatetic, solving new and different problems at constantly changing worksites—often blending office work with time in the great outdoors.

7.T errorism. The expert consensus is that the United States will again fall victim to a major

terrorist attack. Jobs in the antiterrorism field have already mushroomed since 9/11, but if another attack were to occur, even more jobs would surely be generated. Demand should particularly grow in such areas as computer security and Islamic-country intelligence, but their required skill sets are difficult to acquire. More accessible yet also likely to be in demand is emergency planning.

(from U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 19, 2007) Questions:

1.What are the causes of the growth in healthcare demand?

2.Why do patient families hire patient advocates?

3.What are the characteristics of a digitalized world?

4.What effects will globalization have on the U.S. job market?

5.What clinical implications will genomics start to yield?

6.What are the main elements that contribute to the creation of cutting-edge careers?

Lesson Thirteen.

Kaka: Brazil’s Mr. Perfect

1.Brazil is a conveyor belt that produces brilliant talents. Following in the footsteps of Romario,

Rivaldo, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho is Ricardo Izecson Santos Leite.

2.Kaka, as he is better known, is the embodiment of elegance, a player who

exudes pure class. His ability on the ball, his ability to dominate games, to see

openings and to make the right decisions - these are all, quite simply, of the

highest possible order.

3.Kaka's background is far from typical. He hails not from the poverty of the

favelas, but from a middle-class family, with the comforts and educational background that this

entails. While his father Bosco, an engineer by profession, has looked after his career and handled all of his contract negotiations, Kaka himself set out a plan for his professional development which he has pursued, irresistibly, with singular determination, leaving little room for chance. 4.Kaka is the son-in-law that every mother dreams of. While he never dreamt that he would one

day become the best player in the world, he always set out to be number one.

5.Born in the capital Brasilia in 1982, Kaka grew up in Sao Paulo after his parents moved there

when he was seven. Like all kids of his age, he played football and showed an aptitude for the game early on. However, back then his enthusiasm for the game was nothing beyond the ordinary.

It was only when he turned 15 that he decided he wanted to make a career for himself in football,

although even then he did not give up his studies.

6.However, three years later, his ambitions almost suffered a fatal blow

when he fractured a vertebra in his spine following a swimming pool accident.

"At that moment, I realised that I had been saved by the hand of God," he

wrote in his diary. Since then, he has been unwavering in his religious faith,

and after every latest feat on the football pitch, he never fails to acknowledge his debt to God by raising his arms to the skies.

7.Kaka's professional career has unfolded at a remarkable pace. In 2001, he found himself in the

Sao Paulo youth team. By the age of 18 he was already being promoted to the senior team and on

31 January 2002, he made his national team debut for Brazil against Bolivia. By that stage, it was

clear that nothing was going to stop him.

8.Three years on, former Sao Paulo and AC Milan star Leonardo, who had been following

Kaka's development closely, convinced him and his family that he should move to Italy, which he did in the s ummer of 2003. By this stage, he had already won the FIFA World Cup? with Brazil in 2002, and his 48 goals in 131 appearances for Sao Paulo provided a clear indication of the scale of his talent.

9.Once in Europe, he required no time at all to find his feet. But

then Kaka always manages to make even the most difficult

challenges appear simple. In the 2003/04 season, he was a revelation,

as he helped AC Milan to their 17th Serie A title. Three years later, he had conquered Europe, helping the Rossoneri to the 2006/07 UEFA Champions League crown, and finishing as the tournament's ten-goal top scorer in the process.

10."He is an extremely calm and composed boy who is never prone to either euphoria or

depression," says his coach at AC Milan, Carlo Ancelotti. "He has great inner strength, and there is never any danger of him allowing his success go to his head. He is a great champion."

11.Positioned behind the main striker, in the role of what the Italians call the trequartista - part

creator, part scorer - Kaka is often the player who conjures the final pass, but equally often he is on hand to apply the finish.

12.However, perhaps the most astonishing thing about the Brazilian is the simplicity of his

actions, which are always executed with technical brilliance and total control. His recent goal for Brazil against Peru offers a perfect illustration: after first controlling the ball with his left foot, he delivered a finish with his right that ended up in the top corner of the net.

13."I'm going through a good period. I enjoy being the link between midfield and attack, bringing

the ball forward and taking on defenders. That is the area of the pitch where I prefer to operate,"

says a smiling Kaka, making it all sound so easy.

14."He is the complete modern player," says former Brazil left-back Roberto Carlos of his

compatriot." Meanwhile, Barcelona's Edmilson praises Kaka's "humility and straightforwardness".

He adds that Kaka "has the aura of a leader that should make him the player to captain the Brazil national team at the 2010 and 2014 World Cups." (from https://www.360docs.net/doc/2c18352720.html,. Nov. 30, 2007)

Questions:

1.According to the author‘s opinion, what‘s the difference between Kaka and other ―typical‖

football players?

2.Why does Kaka always raise his arms to the sky after every latest feat on the pitch?

3.What role does Kaka play in the games? What‘s his function and characteristics?

4.Please give a brief summary of Kaka‘s professional career and his achievements.

5.What qualities should we learn from Kaka?

Lesson Fourteen.

Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

1.Doris Lessing, the Persian-born, Rhodesian-raised and London-residing novelist whose

deeply autobiographical writing has swept across continents and reflects her engagement with the social and political issues of her time, won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.

2.Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy described her as ―that epicist of

the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.‖ The award comes with a 10 million Swedish crown honorarium, about

$1.6 million.

3.Ms. Lessing, who turns 88 later this month, never finished high school and largely educated

herself through voracious reading. She has written dozens of books of fiction, as well as plays, nonfiction and two volumes of autobiography. She is the 11th woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

4.Ms. Lessing learned of the news from a group of reporters camped on her doorstep as she

returned from a visit to the hospital with her son. ―I was a bit s urprised because I had forgotten about it actually,‖ she said. ―My name has been on the short list for such a long time.‖

5.As the persistent sound of her phone ringing came from inside the house, Ms. Lessing said

that on second thought, she was not as surpr ised ―because this has been going on for something like 40 years,‖ referring to the number of times she has been mentioned as a likely honoree.

―Either they were going to give it to me sometime before I popped off or not at all.‖

6.After a few moments, Ms. Lessing, who is stout, sharp and a bit hard of hearing, excused

herself to go inside. ―Now I‘m going to go in to answer my telephone,‖ she said. ―I swear I‘m going upstairs to find some suitable sentences, which I will be using from now on.‖

7.Although Ms. Lessing is passionate about social and political issues, she is unlikely to be as

controversial as the previous two winners,Orhan Pamuk of Turkey or Harold Pinter of Britain, whose views on current political situations led commentators to suspect that the Swedish Academy was choosing its winners in part for nonliterary reasons.

8.Ms. Lessing‘s strongest legacy may be that she inspired a generation of feminists with her

breakthrough novel, ―The Golden Notebook.‖ In its citation, the Swedish Academy said: ―The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work, and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship.‖

9.Ms. Lessing wrote candidly about the inner lives of women and rejected the notion that they

should abandon their lives to marriage and children. ―The Golden Notebook,‖ published in 1962, tracked the story of Anna Wulf, a woman who wanted to live freely and was, in some ways, Ms.

Lessing‘s alter ego.

10.Because she frankly described anger and aggression in women, she was attacked as

―unfeminine.‖ In response, Ms. Lessing wrote, ―Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise.‖

11.Although she has been held up as an early heroine of femin ism, Ms. Lessing later

disavowed that she herself was a feminist, for which she received the ire of some British critics and academics.

12.Ms. Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in1919 inwhat is now Iran. Her father was a bank

clerk, and her mother was trained as a nurse. Lured by the promise of farming riches, the family

moved to what is now Zimbabwe, where Ms. Lessing had what she has called a painful childhood.

13.She left home when she was 15, and in 1937 she moved to Salisbury (now Harare) in

Southern Rhodesia, where she took jobs as a telephone operator and nursemaid. She married at 19 and had two children. A few years later, feeling imprisoned, she abandoned her family. She later married Gottfried Lessing, a central member of the Left Book Club, a left-wing organization, and they had a son.

14.Ms. Lessing, who joined the Communist Party in Africa, repudiated Marxist theory during

the Hungarian crisis of 1956, a view for which she was criticized by some British academics. 15.When she divorced Mr. Lessing, she and her young son, Peter, moved to London, where she

began her literary career. Her debut novel, published in Britain in 1949, was ―The Grass Is Singing,‖ which chronicled the relationship between a white farmer‘s wife and her black servant.

In her earliest work Ms. Lessing drew upon her childhood experiences in colonial Rhodesia to write about the collision of white and black cultures and racial injustice.

16.Because of her outspoken views, the governments of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa

declared her a ―prohibited alien‖ in 1956.

17.When ―The Golden Notebook‖ was first published in the United States, Ms. Lessing was

still unknown. Robert Gottlieb, then her editor at Simon & Schuster and later at Alfred A. Knopf, said it sold only 6,000 copies. ―But they were the right 6,000 copies,‖ Mr. Gottlieb said by telephone from his home in New Y ork. ―The people who read it were galvanized by it, and it made her a famous writer in America.‖

18.Speaking from Frankfurt during its annual international book fair, Jane Friedman, president

and chief executive of HarperCollins, which has published Ms. Lessing in the United States and Britain for the last 20 years, said that ―for women and for literature, Doris Lessing is a mother to us all.‖

19.Ms. Lessing‘s other novels include ―The Good Terrorist‖ and ―Martha Quest.‖ Her latest

novel is ―The Cleft,‖ published by HarperCollins in July. She has dabbled in science fiction, and some of her later works bear the imprint of her interest in Sufi mysticism, which she has interpreted as stressing a link between the fates of individuals and society.

20.Lynn Bryan, a friend of Ms. Lessing, spent some time at the author‘s home on Thursday as

flowers arrived, Champagne was served and the phone rang off the hook. Ms. Bryan said she asked Ms. Lessing why she thinks she won the prize this year.

21.―?I don‘t know,‘‖ Ms. Bryan said the author replied. ―?I am genuinely surprised because

they rejected me all those years ago.‘‖

22.The phone rang again, Ms. Bryan said. It was another friend, whom Ms. Lessing was to

meet that evening at a Chinese restaurant. She apologized and told him she couldn‘t. She had just won the Nobel Prize. (from The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2007)

Questions:

1.Why did Ms. Lessing feel surprised when she heard the news of winning the Nobel Prize? What‘s

the citation from the Swedish Academy to her?

2.Why was Ms. Lessing attacked as ―unfeminine‖? What‘s her response?

3.Why was she declared as ―prohibited alien‖ by the governments of Southern Rhodesia and South

Africa? How did her life experience influence her works?

4.What‘s Ms. Lessing‘s representative work? What is it about and how has it influenced the

public？

5.Why did Jane Friedman think Ms. Lessing won the prize?

Lesson Fifteen

He’s just like you and me,

except for the ￡31bn fortune

PROFILE: Warren Buffett

1.When F Scott Fitzgerald observed that ―the very rich are different from you and me‖,

the novelist was clearly not thinking of people like Warren Buffett. Proclaimed the world‘s richest man last week, the American investment strategist eats at his local grill and drives to work from the modest home that he bought in unfashionable Omaha, Nebraska, in 1958, which is today valued at about ￡350,000.

2.Such is the frugality of the 77-year-old ―sage of Omaha‖, whose wealth increased by ￡5

billion last year to ￡31 billion, that when he married in 2006 he bought a discount ring from his own jewellery company. He has vowed to pass on only a small chunk of his fortune to his children, Susie, Howard and Peter. He wants them to have ―enough to do anything but no t to

do nothing‖.

3.His advice has enriched more investors than anyone else in history,

but Buffett pays himself a mere ￡50,000 a year and prefers such ordinary

fare as steaks and hamburgers, washed down with Cherry Coke. Not for

him the bright lights of New Y ork, even though he owns a private jet, his

one extravagance: ―I have everything I need and am very comfortable

right here at home in Omaha. I feel sorry for people who are consumed by possessions.‖

4.Known for his wry homilies, Buffett has bet his house in jest against that of his friend

and bridge partner Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder now relegated from first to third place in the zillionaire stakes, according to Forbes magazine. They used to meet for games at

a Holiday Inn near Buffett‘s home,

b ut of late they play online - Buffett‘s only concession to

newfangled technology - under the user names ―T-bone‖ (Buffett) and ―Challenger X‖.

5.Buffett‘s ranking may seem puzzling, given that in 2006 he announced he was donating

his fortune to charity, with about ￡15 billion going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, dedicated to combating Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. The donations are in instalments - the latest for ￡880m - but Buffett just gets richer.

6.This act of philanthropy was an indirect con sequence of Buffett‘s unorthodox role as a

husband and lover. In 1952 he married Susan Thompson, a former cabaret singer who, after raising their children, announced in 1977 that she was leaving Omaha to pursue her singing career in San Francisco. They remained married and on good terms, holidaying together and helping charitable groups.

7.Buffett had always expected that Susan would inherit his wealth and pass it to

charitable causes, he explained later: ―When we got married, I told Susie I was going to be rich . . . [not] because of any special virtues of mine, but simply because I was wired at birth to allocate capital.‖ Susie was less than thrilled by this prospect: ―But we were totally in sync about what to do with it - and that was to give it back to so ciety.‖

8.In 1978 Susan introduced her husband to Astrid Menks, a Latvian working as a waitress

in a restaurant, who soon moved in with him. Buffett sent out Christmas cards signed ―Warren, Susie and Astrid‖.

9.Two years after Susan died from a stroke in 2004, Buffett married Astrid, then 60.

―Astrid loves him and takes care of him,‖ his daughter Susie said. ―If Warren didn‘t have a cent she‘d still be with him.‖

10.Just before their wedding, he revealed his plan to release his ever-growing riches to

charitable causes for decades to come.

11.Buffett likes to make wealth-generation sound simple. He once summed it up thus:

―Rule No 1: never lose money. Rule No 2: never forget rule No 1.‖ His prescience is world-renowned: he refused to buy stocks in the booming 1960s, only to strike gold in the plummeting 1970s. He walked away from the dotcom boom in the 1990s, sticking with boring blue-chips such as Gillette, Coca-Cola and American Express. He always came up smelling of greenbacks.

12.He is one of the most respected voices in financial America, embodying Midwest

virtues of probity, modesty and common sense, so his recent warning that America was in

recession stirred panic. His utterances attract 20,000 acolytes to the annual meeting of his business empire, dubbed the ―Woodstock of capitalism‖.

13.He was born in 1930 in a house in Omaha on the banks of the Missouri River, the son

of Leila and Howard, a Republican stockbroker elected to Congress on a platform described as ―to the right of God‖. His grandfather ran the family‘s grocery store dating from 1869, where Buffett‘s fortune began.

14.―My grandfather would sell me Wrigley‘s chewing gum and I would go door to door

around my neighbourhood selling it,‖ he recalled. ―He also sold me a six-pack of Coca-Cola for a quarter [25c] and I would sell it for a nickel [5c] each, so I made a small profit.‖ He supplemented his earnings by selling lost golf balls. When the family moved to Washington, the 12-year-old Warren took on five paper rounds, using his access to customers to sell them magazine subscriptions.

15.By the following year he was making ￡80 a month, an incredible sum in the 1940s.

Through shrewd investment, at the age of 14 he saved the ￡400 needed to buy 40 acres of local farmland, which he rented out. His first dabble in the stock market earned him a $2 profit before the shares shot up, teaching him that patience pays off.

16.After a first degree at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, he went to Columbia

Business School in New Y ork, where he fell under the spell of Benjamin Graham, an investment guru who awarded Buffett the only A+ grade he ever bestowed.

17.Buffett worked for his mentor after graduation but outgrew him, according to Roger

Lowenstein, Buffett‘s biographer: ―Graham would amaze the staff with his ability to scan a page with columns of figures and pick out an error. But Buffett was faster at it.‖

18.His strategy was to search for ―cigar butt‖ companies, no longer of interest to the

market and thus undervalued, but which still had ―a few puffs‖ left in them.

19.In 1962 he spotted a run-down Massachusetts textile firm, Berkshire Hathaway, which

he bought and transformed into an insurance company. His empire now extends to sweet shops and Fruit of the Loom clothing. He has shares in The Washington Post, Tesco and a controlling stake in CE Electric, which supplies energy to 3.7m English homes.

20.He denounced the ―outright crookedness‖ of Enron, the collapsed American

conglomerate, and the dubious methods used by corporations to calculate pension charges and stock option costs: ―CEOs will be respected and believed . . . only when they deserve to be. They should quit talking about some bad apples and reflect instead on their own behaviour.‖

21.This rigour extends to his family dealings, notably his past stinginess with his children.

On one occasion his daughter Susie needed $20 to get her car out of an airport car park, but

Buffett made her write a cheque to him first. He doesn‘t spare himself either: ―Only my clothes are more expensive now, but they look cheap when I put them on.‖

22.To most Americans, however, Buffett is a national treasure. But as he put it: ―Y ou only

learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out.‖

(from The Sunday Times, March 9, 2008) Questions:

1.Does Warren Buffett live an extravagant life?

2.How does Buffett educate his children?

3.How did Buffett deal with his big fortune?

4.What are Buffett‘s rules of making money?

5.What is the most valuable quality in Buffett?

6.How do you understand the last sentence in this article?

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