| 95 QUESTIONS ABOUT TEXAS PUBLIC EDUCATION Should Texas' next edu-missioner be so closely connected to Libya, Kadhafi via Areva, France's nuclear powerhouse . . . . next stop, the White House? By Peyton Wolcott Updated Saturday, September 1, 2007 - 8:37 am |
| H o w w e t a k e b a c k o u r c h i l d r e n ' s e d u c a t i o n : o n e p e r s o n , o n e q u e s t i o n , o n e s c h o o l a t a t i m e . Copyright 1999-2008 Peyton Wolcott |
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| Conservative Commentary - Akin Gump / Areva / Libya / Rice , more |
How we take back our children's education: one person, one question, one school at a time. |
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| Our public schools are essentially socialist models and their engine and currency is the realm of emotions and people skills. |
| HEADS UP |
| We've already asked three questions (of 95) regarding public education here in Texas; today's headline asks the fourth: "Should Texas' next edumissioner be so closely connected to Libya, Kadhafi? Via Areva, France's nuclear powerhouse?" By "this" we mean: Sandy Kress, who is one of the most powerful and influential figures in U.S. public education--as one example, he is credited as being the architect of "No Child Left Behind" --wants to be our great state's next Commis- sioner of Public Education. Akin Gump, the law firm in which Kress is a partner, has as one of its clients French nuclear giant Areva. France? Why does France matter? |
| San Antonio Express-News Editorial: Rewarding Libya dictator puts the world in danger SAEN Web Posted: 08/10/2007 05:55 PM CDT A leopard doesn't change its spots. And Moammar Gadhafi, who has incredibly bought and connived his way back into the good graces of the international community, cannot change his brutal and unpredictable ways. The latest display of his brutality and unpredictability was his release from death row of foreign health workers who had been tortured into confessions of intentionally spreading HIV at a Libyan pediatric hospital. There was good reason to suspect the dictator's clemency had been purchased. Now we know some of the terms of the deal. The French corporation Areva has signed a memorandum of understanding to build a nuclear reactor for Gadhafi. And the French government confirmed that the European aerospace company EADS, of which France is the largest public owner, has inked a major arms deal with Gadhafi for the purchase of anti-tank missiles and a radio communications system. These are the most disturbing examples of Western governments and businesses rushing in to do business with a violent regime that is untrustworthy. It calls to mind the long train of diplomats and arms dealers who shook hands with Saddam Hussein, despite his deplorable human rights record and support for terrorism. Express-News columnist Mansour El-Kikhia, a native of Libya, is intimately familiar with Gadhafi's depredations. In a column he wrote about the dictator in 2004, El-Kikhia employed the following allegory: "If you see the lion's fangs showing, don't think the lion is smiling." With blueprints for a nuclear reactor in his hands and stockpiles of weapons on the way, Gadhafi's fangs are showing. NOTE: THE ABOVE SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS EDITORIAL IS REPRINTED HERE IN ITS ENTIRETY. |
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| TIMELINE: 1988: Pan Am #103 bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland; 270 die. 2003: Libya takes responsibility. JULY 2007: Areva (Anne Lauvergeon-CEO/France) hires Akin Gump, Areva makes nuclear deal with Libya. TEA commish candidate Sandy Kress is an AG partner. The White House announces Secretary of State Condoleezza's Rice interest in visiting Libya. AUG. 2007: U.S. Ass't Secretary of State to visit Libya on preparatory planning trip for Rice's visit. |
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| Anne Lauvergeon, (at center in the graphic above right) is Areva's CEO and a Mitterrand-trained Socialist; having consolidated Cogema and Framatome (more below) into Areva, she now wants to nationalize France's nuclear industry, in which sector they are the acknowledged world leaders; further, "Areva is the leading |
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| Graphic (above, L to R) Moammar Kadhafi (Libyan dictator), Ann Lauvergeon (CEO of Areva), Sandy Kress (Akin Gump); (below, L to R) Lockerbie crash; 5 nurses, doctor held 8 years, tortured in Libya. (PHOTO--NYTimes) C.Rice (PHOTO-Miguel Riopa, AFP/Getty Images/ USA Today) |
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| The unkind appraisal would be that [Akin Gump] is part of the capital's current climate that elevates money above all else. -- Robert Novak |
| player in the U.S.'s burgeoning nuclear power sector. Once it gets a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Areva could soon install the first new nuclear reactors on U.S. soil in 30 years, thanks to a recently signed deal with Baltimore-based Constellation Energy." SOURCE--Forbes) Unistar is the name of the joint venture. (SOURCE--MSNBC) Unistar: Coming to a Three Mile Island near you? France-Libya-Akin Gump connection Areva has just inked a deal with Colonel Moam- mar Kadhafi to build a nuclear reactor for Libya. |
| NOTE: It's always difficult translating proper names from another language and alphabet into English; as a recent example, Peking and Beijing. For centuries the Hindu religion was spelled Hindoo. For now I'm still using Kadhafi because it's the spelling with which most of us are familiar. Kadhafi gets 1,990,000 Google hits, while Gadhafi only 447,000. In the course of researching this noticed several other new spellings, including Qaddafi and Gheddafi. --P.W. |
| Libya; that's the country where Kadhafi is dictator and Fashionista-For-Life. Libya's also the country that finally accepted responsibility in 2003--fifteen years later--for the explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in which 270 people died. Much more recently, there were the Bulgarian hospital workers, a doctor |
| and five nurses, who were tortured--this an admission just last week by Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam Kadhafi--by Libya into signing false confessions that they had infected children with the virus that causes AIDS. "They were released last month after spending eight years in a Libyan prison [and were] were pardoned when they returned to Bulgaria." (SOURCE--Voice of America News) |
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| Freed doctor des- cribes torture ordeal inside Libyan jail · Medic left with scars after being caged with dogs · Bulgarian nurses raped claims Palestinian Kate Connolly (Berlin) Monday July 30, 2007 The Guardian [U.K.] The Palestinian doctor who was held in Libyan custody along with five Bulgarian nurses on charges they infected hundreds of children with HIV, has described in detail how they were tortured during their eight-year ordeal. Ashraf Alhajouj, 38, said he was beaten, held in cages with police dogs and given electric shocks, including to his private parts. He said that he and the nurses were sometimes put together naked in the same room and tortured. In a harrowing first-person account, published in the latest edition of the German news magazine Der Spiegel following the release of the six last week, Dr Alhajouj described how following his initial arrest in January 1999, along with the nurses, he was taken to a police dog training centre outside Tripoli. "For the first days I was locked up with three dogs who were ordered to attack me. My leg is full of scars and marks from where they bit me [and] I had a big hole in my knee," he said. Later, he said, wire cable that had been stripped of its plastic coating, was wound round his [genitals] and he was dragged "screaming and crying" across the floor. He was also given electric shocks with a generator-style machine. "They put the minus cable on my finger and the plus cable on my ear or my genitals. The most painful thing was their ability to increase the speed of the electricity flow. When I fell unconscious they would throw cold water over my naked body and then begin all over again," he said. The torture times were set for between 5pm and 5am and continued for 13 months. The nurses were submitted to similar treatment. "Sometimes we were tortured in the same room. I saw them half-naked, they saw me completely naked when I was being electrocuted. We heard each others' whimpering, crying and screaming." He said he saw the women being raped and watched as one of them broke a piece of glass from the window and cut her wrists when she could not bear it any longer. Dr Alhajouj, who is temporarily living in Bulgaria, denies the charges that he and the nurses infected 426 Libyan children with HIV. He described the hygiene conditions at Bengasi hospital, where he went to work in 1998, as "catastrophic". "We had no needles, the sterilisation apparatus was broken and there was only one pair of scissors to cut the umbilical cord of a dozen newborns". He said he planned to sue his torturers. |
| Anne Lauvergeon, Cogema, Framatome & Areva Lauvergeon "was ranked by the magazine Forbes as the 8th most powerful woman in the world, 2nd in Europe and 1st in France.... Biography In 1978 she enrolled in the École Normale Supérieure, taking the Agrégation in physics before joining the Corps de Mines. In 1983 she enrolled in her first training course with the Corps de Mines, in the iron and steel industry, at Usinor. A second training course, in 1984, took place with the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique, where she studied chemical safety in Europe. From 1985 to 1988, she was with the l'Inspection générale des carrières (IGC). In 1990, she was placed in charge of the mission for the international economy and foreign trade by French President François Mitterrand. The following year, she became assistant secretary general. She was then named “sherpa”, i.e. personal representative to the president, and charged with preparing international meetings such as the G7 summit. In 1995, she joined the banking sector, and became a managing partner of Lazard. In March 1997, she was named general director of Alcatel, before becoming part of the group's executive committee. Leadership in Nuclear Power In June 1999, she was named Président(e)-directeur(-trice) générale (CEO) of the group Cogema, succeeding Jean Syrota, who resigned under pressure from the The Greens. In July 2001, she merged Cogema, Framatome and other companies to create Areva. Taking the head of the new company, she entered the small circle of women directing international corporations. The 2006 Fortune Global 500, published by the American magazine |
| We ask again: Should Texas' next edu-missioner be only two degrees of commercial separation from Kadhafi? And Libya? Are we as Texans comfortable with this proximity? |
| Rice says she hopes to visit Libya soon USA Today July 19, 2007 EXCERPT: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed interest in visiting Libya after it released accused medics this week and ridded itself of "its weapons of mass destruction," said Rice. "As a result Libya has put itself on a path that is leading to investment...by Western companies," she added. WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday she hopes to travel soon to Libya for a trip that would mark full U.S. diplomatic acceptance for the North African country after decades of pariah status. Rice said she had not set any dates for the visit, which comes after Libya's release this week of six foreign medical workers who had been imprisoned there for more than eight years. She said Libya had taken great strides to reintegrate itself into the international community. "Libya made an important strategic decision to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction," she said. "As a result it has put itself on a path that is leading to investment in Libya by Western companies, which could not invest there before. I know that American companies are very interested in working in Libya. "I sincerely hope that I will be able to visit there soon," Rice said in an interview with Radio Sawa, a U.S.- funded Arabic-language broadcaster. She noted that President Bush had recently nominated a new U.S. ambassador to Libya, fulfilling pledges Washington made after Tripoli accepted responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie, Scotland, bombing and agreed to pay restitution, and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi dismantled his weapons of mass destruction programs. |
| August 16, 2007: U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch will travel to Tripoli, Libya, on Aug. 22 for a two-day visit that will focus on planning a trip to Libya by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a State Department official said Aug. 16. Rice's future visit would signify full diplomatic acceptance of Libya after years of isolation from the United States. (SOURCE--Strategic Forecasting Inc.) |
| Libya has put itself on a path that is leading to investment...by Western companies -- Condoleezza Rice |
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| Bulgarian nurses on trial in Libya (PHOTO--Getty/Physicians for Human Rights) |
| Libya Gingerly Begins Seeking Economic but Not Political Reform By Michael Slackman Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting The New York Times March 2, 2007 TRIPOLI, Libya — For more than three decades, Libya has been an experiment in one man’s ideology. The result is a country with few functioning institutions, an unreliable legal system, inadequate schools and hospitals, and a population isolated and unprepared for modernity. That is the assessment of some of the government’s own consultants. |
| $56.6 mil? Forgiven? Uh-huh . . . . Aug. 2, 2007-- "The Bulgarian government decided [today] to forgive $56.6 million in Soviet- era debt it is owed by Libya after a deal led to the release of six medics con- victed of infect- ing Libyan chil- dren with HIV." (SOURCE--Reuters) |
| A butcher dragged a sheep on Satur- day in front of his shop in Tripoli. (CAPTION/PHOTO--ShawnBaldwin/NY Times) |
| Businessmen outside a Visa International meeting this week in a hotel in Tripoli, Libya, under a portrait of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the system of government he instituted. There is much talk of economic, but not political, change. (CAPTION/PHOTO--Shawn Baldwin/NYTimes) |
| For more Shawn Baldwin photos: www.ShawnBaldwin.com |
| Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon |
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| 08.31.09 UPDATE: Friends, even though Robert Scott was appointed Texas Commissioner of Education two years ago rather than Sandy Kress, this page will remain available because of the linkages; also, Democrat Sandy continues to play a strong role in Republican edu-politics--plus, Libya's back in the news. |
| Fortune, ranked her as the 2nd most powerful women in Europe, behind Russo Stalemate, future president of Alcatel-Lucent. In 2006, she remains as the woman directing the most employees in the world. In 2001, Roger-Gerard Schwartzenberg chose her to chair the "national contest of assistance the creation of companies of innovating technologies". In September of 2002 she became the subject of a controversy: the daily economic newspaper Les Échos uncovered a report from the French court of auditors, criticizing her compensation (salary of €305,000 with bonus of €122,000), considered to be substantially higher than that of leaders of other public companies, and especially her golden parachute of two years wages. In spite of rumours of resignation, Anne Lauvergeon kept her position. Towards the end of 2006, Areva encountered difficulties with its new European Pressurized Reactor, and expected a delay of 18 months to 3 years according to the French daily newspaper La Tribune for the delivery of the first of its kind in Finland. The delay may cost €700 million. Anne Lauvergeon is also President of the board of directors of École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Nancy and is a director or board member of SUEZ, Total S.A., Safran S.A. and Vodafone. (SOURCE--Wikipedia) |