Cape Town IRC compiles brief overview of how Congress works

Too many reporters in South Africa have been writing stories that indicate their utter ignorance of how Congress works, especially how laws are made.



Many of the websites we found that explain this topic are just too detailed for busy journalists, and we weren't sure how their (usually quite big) egos would react to being referred to a kid's site such as http://bensguide.gpo.gov/9-12/lawmaking/index.html.



In the end, we simply put together our own page on the U.S. Congress. Take a look: http://pretoria.usembassy.gov/wwwhit40.html.



Mark Dobson

IRC Director--South Africa

[Free e-book] Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Fiction

Dear IRC Colleagus,



Maybe this e-book can be useful for American Corner or for IRC users.



Best



- IRC Jakarta



Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Fiction

by Jeanne Smith

http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft7199p0zh/



Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter One— The Trickster Aesthetic: A Cross-Cultural Feminist Theory

Chapter Two— Monkey Business: Maxine Hong Kingston's Transformational Trickster Texts

Chapter Three— Comic Liberators and Word-Healers: The Interwoven Trickster Narratives of Louise Erdrich

Chapter Four— Tar and Feathers: Community and the Outcast in Toni Morrison's Trickster Novels

Chapter Five— Conclusion

Notes

Works Cited



Suggested citation:

Smith, Jeanne Rosier. Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1997.

http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft7199p0zh/



IRC Jakarta, Indonesia

email: irc@usembassyjakarta.org

Some public diplomacy items

Bruce Bawer, an American writer resident in Norway for the past few years, has written an article in the latest issue of the Hudson Review called "Hating America." It is a meditation on what he considers to be a prevailing attitude in Norway and W. Europe of irrational belligerence towards the U.S.



Farish Noor, a political scientist and human rights activist, has written a review of Helena Finn's article in Foreign Affairs last year about the importance of cultural diplomacy (The Case for Cultural Diplomacy: Engaging Foreign Audiences)



Interesting reading from two very different perspectives!

Arab Human Development Report 2004

Arab.pdf



I am very late to post this, but anyway let me do it.

ARAB HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2003

Building a Knowledge Society

UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

ARAB FUND FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT