Cigdem Göle

For 10 years Iran has been experiencing reformist movements, however it was never at such a dramatic extent. They have always been supressed by the conservatives whose majority is now questionable. What is behind that change is actually a good old fashioned economic feud rather than individual rights and freedoms. In order to comprehend the motives behind the crisis, it is better to look at country's economic system. The state of Iran has so long been perceived as a "father" by its citizens. The effect of the state on economics has been huge and a kind of welfare state has always been a preferred policy choice for decision makers. This kind of social net -albeit flawed- is a significant glue for the islamic revolution. Thanks to remarkable amount of natural resources, whatever happens, "the father" would protect his family.Nevertheless, today father does not earn as expected. High resource prices would have been a useful compensation for Iran's economy if their yields had not been spent for military purposes such as uranium enrichment. Ahmedinejad's government did not take necessary steps to patch up the achilles' heels of the economy.This was the time when reformists raised their voices against their oppression regime and called their leader a dictator. Nevertheless the opposition would not have had such a substantial effect if they had not been supported by Iran's economic elite. This elite oftenly called as the "Bazaar", backs the opposition movement for several reasons. For one, they want more economic freedom for freer commercial ties -even if not entirely free-. Secondly, the crisis hit this bourgeois hard. They do not have a free market economy and strong economic ties with the rest of the world and thus their flexibility before the financial crisis is very much limited. You can easily find some of them among the protesters in the streets of Tahran today. Lastly, economic woes force people to join the opponents' lines. In these days, being a protester is profitable. Iran struggles to deal with government official pensions, let alone fulfill its obligations as a "father". Oppression on economic relations would cause individual freedoms to be stricted, which would give a great opportunity for other "revolutionists". And it is quite possible for Musavi to be as tyran as Ahmedinejad on individual freedoms if he could have come into the office.

Oh no ... It's the Germans! Should they really want to look like Kiss on a particularly bad day? The Glorious Scandinavian stars!...or more like a bad hair day for sissy-like Vikings. Great Turkish horror and silliness. Yes, keep it as unreal as possible.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. British way of partying. Why? Uncategorizable foolishness. ----- Source : museum of bad album covers.

Hi Jean, Could you give more details about this program? There might be teachers in the university I work who would be interested. Thanks

quote name='John Dolva' date='May 28 2009, 11:04 PM' post='167899' I dont know if that is so curious. It can be seen as prescient in the light of the experience of the day. Hitler, while leading his country and its people to destruction, is certainly significant in the grand scheme of things and while rightly reviled as all such people should properly be, before they get into a position to become so influential. Perhaps Hitler had a much stronger influence on high rank officials than he had on his people. Schirach once told Speer, Don't you see, with Hitler's death it wasn't so much the government as the State itself that ceased to exist. The State was indissolubly bound up with Hitler, to which Speer replied, Just tell that to Dönitz. As Hitler's successor and the Reich's last head of state I'm sure he'll be delighted to hear it. Anyway it's nice that all these other forum sections exist where interests other than JFK can be persued. http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/ARTS/artReich.htm "Divine destiny has given the German people everything in the person of one man. Not only does he possess strong and ingenious statesmanship, not only is he ingenious as a soldier, not only is he the first worker and the first economist among his people but, and this is perhaps his greatest strength, he is an artist. He came from art, he devoted himself to art, especially the art of architecture, this powerful creator of great buildings. And now he has also become the Reich's builder." (ed : and Speer as his Architect?) --Hakenkreuzbanner (The Swastika Flag), June 10, 1938 Speer : http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ahbuild.htm ''Building is not merely a way of passing time for the Führer, rather a serious way of giving expression in stone to the will of the National Socialist movement. Although Speer thought Hitler was a self-pitying cruel man, there was also a feeling of admiration in Speer towards him. No doubt a part of this feeling stemmed from the love of art that they both shared. Also it should be added that Hitler himself admired Speer as much as Speer admired him. During a walk in the woods near his house in Obersalzberg, Hitler turned Speer and said, Speer, you are my architect. You know that I always wanted to be an architect myself. The World War and the criminal November Revolution prevented that. Otherwise I might today be Germany's foremost architect, as you are now.

The BBC documentary on Speer - parts 1-6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deGwMxn_HU8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnWCd4il8pk...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80vkCLV_bto...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWtdv8Hkw0Y...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yx6wjzCP2c...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UKncb35rFU...feature=related And a New Statesman article dated 2001 http://www.newstatesman.com/200111050043 Apart from skilfully playing the Anglo-Americans off against the Russians, his strategy was to "cop a plea", recognising the unparalleled crimes of the National Socialist regime and accepting moral responsibility for them in the abstract, while insisting that he had been ignorant of the worst crimes, above all, the extermination of Jews. This mixture of apparent penitence and apparent innocence worked a treat, and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison while other, less adroit, defendants were hanged. At his trial, Speer was, as Fest writes, "still expecting a significant postwar career", and indeed he found one, emerging from Spandau for 15 profitable years as an author and chat-show guest, before dying on a visit to London in 1981. Not everyone fell for the Speer spiel. One of the Americans interrogating him, the economist J K Galbraith, was sure he had concocted a cunning ruse. Decades later, Speer was interrogated again, this time by Gitta Sereny, who peeled away the onion skins of memory until she had him begging for mercy, and showed, to her own satisfaction, that he had known far more than he wished to acknowledge. All of this is carefully described by Fest, who takes it at face value - as indeed he has a tendency to take the whole ludicrous National Socialist movement at its own estimation. Looking at the way Speer designed the Nuremberg rallies with the latest technology to produce "an atmosphere of magic, mystery and exaltation", Fest writes that many visitors were so impressed by the spectacle "that they were prepared to overlook some of the regime's more repulsive features". But those displays of deranged kitsch were some of its more repulsive features, as were Speer's plans for rebuilding Berlin as "Germania". He was visited there by his father, about the only attractive figure in this book, who thought Hitler was a "criminal upstart" and who said, after looking at his son's grandiose schemes, "You've all gone completely mad."

"Don't talk to me about her, John, I told you not to go near her, she is not worthy of notice. I do not choose that either you or your sisters should associate with her." Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at all deliberating on my words- "They are not fit to associate with me." Mrs Reed was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this strange and audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me like a whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me down on the edge of my crib, dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place, or utter one syllable, during the remainder of the day. "What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?" was my scarcely voluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance, something spoke out of me over which I had no control. "What?" said Mrs Reed under her breath, her usually cold, composed gray eye became troubled with a look of fear; she took her hand from my arm, and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child or fiend. I was now in for it. "My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can papa and mamma, they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you wish me dead." Mrs Reed soon rallied her spirits; she shook me most soundly, she boxed both my ears, and then left me without a word. Bessie supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof. Jane Eyre

John Speer mentions the Kennedy assassination on page 398 of Spandau, The Secret Diaries but only for one line. November 25, 1963 I feel that Kennedy's assassinaton is not just an American tragedy, but a tragedy for the world. I haven't come across any of the names on your list in Spandau and I don't think Speer had anything to do with the JFK assassination for he was in prison from 1946 to 1966 and had little contact with the outside world. The aim of this thread is not to track down the possible suspects in the JFK assassination but to discuss the role Albert Speer played in the Nazi era. However, thanks for your interest.

May 4, 1965 Recently, in these days full of memories, I have considered how I would probably characterize Hitler today, after the passage of twenty years. I think I am now less sure than I ever was. All reflection magnifies the difficulties, makes him the more incomprehensible. Of course I have no doubts at all about the judgement of history. But I would not know how to describe the man himself. No doubt I could say that he was cruel, unjust, unapproachable, cold, capricious, self-pitying, and vulgar; and in fact he was all of those things. p.425 I don't even know what he felt for Germany. Did he love this country even a little, or was it only an instrument for his plans? And what I have frequently asked myself ever since our disagreements over my memoranda, did he feel in regard to the downfall of the Reich? Did he suffer on its account? p.426 My whole life, in fact, appears to me strangely alienated. Architecture I loved, and I hoped to make my name live on in history by building. But my real work consisted in the organization of an enormous system of technology. Since then my life has remained attached to a cause that at bottom I disliked. p.450-451 Spandau, The Secret Diaries A lot have been said about Albert Speer. For many, he was an opportunist who joined Hitler's entourage only to gain power, fame and privilege. For some, he was a loyal party member who believed in the Nazi ideals wholeheartedly. And for some, he was just a hypocrite trying to make his way out of the death sentence. The real motivations behind his actions will remain unclear. Maybe he was sincere when he said he took all responsibility and thus the guilt for everything that was perpetrated by way of crime or maybe he was merely playing the good Nazi.

There is a different side to the war propaganda issue for the Ottomans during the First World War. The failed propaganda campaign during WWI was one of the important reasons for the collapse of The Ottoman Empire. The government's limited financial means to carry out any kind of effective campaign and its entry into the First World War on the German side led the empire to an absolute defeat. While the facts are well known, a number of vital details about the entry have been ignored or lightly explored. The first case in point is the secret alliance signed by a handful of Young Turk leaders and Germany on 2 August 1914. Just two days after overtures made by Enver Pasha on 22 July were turned down by the German ambassador in Istanbul, Hans von Wangenheim, the Kaiser overruled his ambassador for "reasons of expediency" and approved the idea of an alliance with Turkey. On 28 July the Turkish government formally presented its proposal to Germany amidst the doubts of many German leaders that Turkey was willing and able to take action against Russia. Second, the treaty was negotiated and signed by Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talat, Minister of the Navy Cemal, and Premier and Foreign Minister Sait Halim, all bearing the title of pasha (general-minister) and Halil Mentes, the head of the House of Deputies. The rest of the cabinet and Parliament were kept in the dark. Even among the signatories, Cemal Pasha was a late convert while Halim had been slow in siding with the war party. None of the signatories, except for Enver, was a known Germanophile; rather, most Ottoman politicians and intellectuals preferred to side with France or Great Britain, the two traditional models of modernization-Westernization and presumed supporters of the Ottomans against Russia.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=13317 The links in the above thread might be useful.

When age fell upon the world,and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning stripped the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets sang no more of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who traveled out of life on a quest into spaces whither the world's dreams had fled. Azathoth - (the eternal) H.P. Lovecraft

The Dead 60s - Riot Radio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJfCJVH0jOM

The Characteristics of an Extensive Reading Approach from Day & Bamford (1998, p. 7-8) Students read as much as possible, perhaps in and definitely out of the classroom. A variety of materials on a wide range of topics is available so as to encourage reading for different reasons and in different ways. Students select what they want to read and have the freedom to stop reading material that fails to interest them. The purposes of reading are usually related to pleasure, information and general understanding. The purposes are determined by the nature of the material and the interests of the student. Reading is its own reward. There are few or no follow-up exercises after reading. Reading materials are well within the linguistic competence of the students in terms of vocabulary and grammar. Dictionaries are rarely used while reading because the constant stopping to look up words makes fluent reading difficult. Reading is individual and silent, at the student's own pace, and, outside class, done when and where the student chooses. Reading speed is usually faster rather than slower as students read books and other material they find easily understandable. Teachers orient students to the goals of the program, explain the methodology, keep track of what each student reads, and guide students in getting the most out of the program. The teacher is a role model of a reader for the students -- an active member of the classroom reading community, demonstrating what it means to be a reader and the rewards of being a reader. http://www.extensivereading.net/er/ERChar.html I've been using Cover to Cover (Oxford U.P.), which was designed to cover extensive reading skills and I've seen that the students have benefited a lot more from it that they do from intensive reading where they deal with a set of comprehension questions and many unknown words.

Dear Tech Support, Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 , and then installed undesirable programs such as NBA 5.0 , NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1 . Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do? Signed, Desperate Woman. -------- DEAR DESPERATE WOMAN, First, keep in mind that Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to 0A Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1 . Please note that Beer 6. 1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta. Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources). In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Cooking 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7. Good Luck Lady! Tech Support

Clouseau : Do you 'ave a licounse? Beggar : Monsieur? Clouseau : City ordinounce 47 B prohibeads the playeng of any musical enstrument in a peublic plass for the purpose of commercial enterprise without a licounse Beggar : I don't understand Clouseau : It iz against the leuw for you to play yeur musical enstrument. Beggar: The leuw? Clouseau: What? Beggar: You say it's against the leuw? Clouseau: Yes, unless you 'ave a proper licounse Beggar: What kind of license? Clouseau: A licounce that permits the playeng of any musical enstrument in a peublic plass for the purpose of commercial enterprise Beggar: Commercial enterprise? Clouseau: Yes, you play that thing and the people give you the meunay Beggar: People give the monkey the money Clouseau: It iz a same Beggar: Not at all monsieur, I am a musician and the monkey is a businessman, he doesn't tell me what to play and I don't tell him what to do with his money Clouseau: Monsieur, don't try to be feunnay with me!! It iz yeur minkey therefore it iz yeur meunay! Beggar: He lives with me but he is not my monkey, one day I came home and I found him sitting in the living room, Ilet him stay but he pays for his own room Clouseau: Then the minkey's breaking the leuw Beggar: But he doesn't play any musical instrument Clouseau: City ordinounce 132 R prohibeads the beggingg! Beggar: How do you know so much about the city ordinances? Clouseau: What sort of stupid question is that, are you blind? Beggar: Yes The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)

Uğur Doyduk A Serenade for a Beautiful and Lonely Country http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/586203/overview A wider collection of his photographs is here http://www.fotokritik.com/kullanici/LordYupa/portfolyo

Here's an idea for a literature or a foreign languages class. I divide the class into groups of four or five, give each group a novel to study and also give them at least two weeks to prepare. Each member of the group has a part in the presentation. One tells the class about the setting, the others about the plot, characters, main idea, etc. In the second part of the presentation, the group acts out a scene from the novel. When it's finished, the viewers ask questions and/or make comments about the group's performance. It's a good activity to improve speaking and listening skills. Last week one of the groups in my class acted out a scene from Little Women (all five of the group members were males). They were all dressed as 19th century ladies. It was really fun.

I can see all the topics now. Thanks

Thank you for this touching post, John. Anzac Cove today

With the advent of technology, computers have become an indispensable part of daily life. Students access the Internet at home and at school on a regular basis. They browse different web pages, check emails and chat with friends. While browsing different web pages they take part in a lot of reading activities. The Internet provides new text formats, new ways to interact with the information on the web pages. The new methods of interacting with information could overwhelm some EFL learners in Taiwan, who are taught to read from traditional text printed on paper. Reading traditional text in the field of ESL/EFL has been well studied over the past few decades. When reading printed text, readers start from the top left-hand corner and finish at the bottom right-hand corner. Readers' eyes move in a straight line, making the reading experience a linear activity. However, the process of reading hypertext is uniquely different (Barnes, 1994). When reading web pages, readers click a hyperlink and then they are led to a different web page. The web pages on the Internet consist of graphics, sounds, pictures, text, animation, and clips of films. Readers read information in scattered bits and pieces not in a textual whole. Their eyes move in a circular motion. According to Ojala (2000), online reading is a non-linear activity. Reading hypertext is different from reading printed text. Background Since reading printed text is different from reading text on the web, the purpose of the study was to find the difficulties that EFL learners experienced and provide pedagogical suggestions accordingly. Students were asked to do reading comprehension exercises on the Internet, and then they were interviewed regarding the reading difficulties they encountered. The Influential Factors of Reading Text on the Web Students were asked the influential factors for reading text on the web. The answers were divided into five types. Eyestrain and eyes-blurred: thirty students (36%) mentioned that their eyes were strained after staring at the computer screens for a period of time. They also felt their eyes blurred and could not read text clearly. Others: Sixteen students (18%) pointed out different factors. Three students mentioned they could not think on computer screens, five of them said it was because of habit, four of them said when they read online, they wanted to browse other irrelevant websites, two of them said the radiation of computers affected reading on computer screens, and two of them said the speed of downloading was a critical point. Background color: fourteen students (16%) pointed out that the background color was a crucial factor that affected reading on computer screens. They did not like a bright background that made their eyes feel uncomfortable. Lines: thirteen students (15%) said that it was easy to skip lines when reading on computer screens. They sometimes got lost between lines, and had to look for the line they intend to read. Font size: thirteen students (15%) stated that the words on computer screens were too small. It increased the difficulty in reading. The biggest factor of reading text on the web was eyestrain. When students' eyes felt tired, they just skipped the questions. Since their eyes felt uncomfortable, it was tiring to go backwards and forwards among web pages. The second influential factor was the background. Students did not like a bright background. The third influential factor is lines and font size. On paper, there are 38 lines on one page using a single space format. A participant can read the questions and find answers from the passage. When the length of the text is not long, some students might still remember where, in the upper, middle or bottom of the page or even which line they saw that particular words or phrases. But on a web page, there could be unlimited lines. When students tried to find a certain word or line, they had to go from the top of the page and look for the answers. They might just get lost in between lines as they mentioned. Therefore, it affected the way the students read in this study. Also, students felt that the words on the web pages were too small. It was fairly tiring for them to read every word on the computer. One particular influential factor listed in "others" was that students thought there were too many websites on the Internet; they would feel like going to other websites and this distracted their attention from the test. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Reading Text on the Web Students were asked the advantages and disadvantages for reading text on web pages. Their answers were categorized as follows: Advantages: (Excerpts from Students) It was convenient for searching for information. There were many animated pictures. Disadvantages: (Excerpts from Students) My eyes got tired easily sitting in front of a computer screen. There were too many words. We could not write anything on computer screens. It was not convenient to carry a computer everywhere. All the words and pictures were on the computer. It was not real. It was more difficult to locate a certain word or line on computer screens. I did not get used to reading on computer screens. There was radiation. I felt tense reading on computers. I could not focus my mind on computer screens. It wasted electric power. It was not convenient to find something on computers because it took time turning on computers and waiting for downloading. While reading the text on the computer screens, students pointed out many disadvantages. For instance, they felt tired physically reading words in front of a computer. Also, that it was not convenient to take the computer everywhere, and that they could not focus their attention on the computer screens. The rest of the article can be found at http://iteslj.org/Articles/Tseng-TextOnTheWeb.html

< No topics were found. This is either because there are no topics in this forum, or the topics are older than the current age cut-off. > Is there a way I can view the other five topics in this section?

Most higher education students are not as indifferent to politics as we think. They might seem to be more interested in other areas such as online games, shopping, chatting and relationships. However, from my own experiences I can say that the majority of them is following what has been going on in the world and discussing politics both in class and outside the campus. Therefore I'm optimistic about the new generation. Aren't we doing the same thing now (criticising the youth for being reckless) that our parents once did? Have we become indifferent individuals? All of these young people have their own political views whether they vote or not. What needs to be done is to guide them to resources (books, articles etc) and help them advance their perceptions.