RDC URBAN PLAN

The Philosophical Views Of Robin Hood Philosophy 

ROBIN HOOD

When someone utters the name: Robin Hood and almost immediately people will conjure up images of the green-clad archer of Sherwood Forest, or the noble robber who steals from the rich to give to the poor, and in a deeper sense, a man who will stand up to injustice and tyranny during the period that historians classify as the Middle Ages. Robin Hood is looked at by many as a hero. When taking a look at this idea through a philosophical point of view, there are more things to consider. Should people actually regard him as a hero? If so, don't we have some sort of a responsibility as a society to look upon people who steal no matter what the reason for their actions may be as nothing more than a thief who is blight on society? On the flip side, is it acceptable to consider him a hero because he is helping those who are deemed less fortunate in society and therefore making society better as a whole? Upon using the ideas of Mills, and Kant it is this authors opinion that indeed Robin Hood though his actions aren't the most morally ideal, he is breaking laws that ultimately were made by rich men and done so to most of the time to protect themselves and their fortune. Philosophically speaking, what Robin Hood did was help the greater good of many at the expense of a few and as a result society as a whole improved.

Before diving in and explaining this further one must look at the three philosophers and their ideas and compare them to the folk hero himself. John Stuart Mill's idea of utilitarianism can be considered as the idea of greatest happiness. Like the folk hero Robin Hoods actions, it can be described as that that a person has a duty to always act so he/she can accomplish the most happiness for the greatest number of people. One of Mill's major ideas to the concept of utilitarianism is that he argues for the group over the individual. When looking at Robin Hood, while he is stealing, he is doing so for the greater good of many as opposed to the individual (in most cases, Robin Hood steals from the Sheriff of Nottingham). But there is a difference between what Mills argues than that of say Jeremy Bentham. Bentham argues that all phases of happiness as indeed equal. Mills tends to argue that pleasures derived from thinking and that of moral fiber can be considered superior to those pleasures that are in the physical nature. Mills also argues that happiness can be considered of higher value than that of contentment. This can be considered one part where Mills might have a problem with what Robin Hood is doing. Mill's idea of being morally correct and having that leading to happiness can lead some people to believe that he would not have approved at Robin Hoods actions.

MOBUTU SESE SEKO

There is a story about Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko which sums up the arrogance and gall required to ransack your homeland and not lose a night's sleep. In an interview on American television the President was asked about the size of his personal fortune. Could he personally pay off his country's multi-billion dollar debt? President Mobutu answered that theoretically that was possible - but how could he be sure he would ever get his money back?

For 32 years President Mobutu has treated Zaire like a toy and used its rich mineral reserves like his own private bank account. He plundered its mines, insisting their entire annual profits be transferred to personal accounts overseas.

In the beginning his country stood still, then as the infrastructure left by the Belgians in 1960 after independence began to crumble from neglect, Zaire began slowly to implode. In the end the Zairean state was just Mobutu; and its gross national product was just pocket money for him and a vast network of cronies. President Mobutu turned the country into a gangsters' paradise where only those in the mob could prosper. He kept friends close and enemies even closer. All patronage eventually flowed from him.

he United States and the West are also despised for standing by while a nation suffered three decades of assault and robbery. During the cold war years they turned a blind eye to President Mobutu's excesses because he was seen as a buffer against the spread of communism in Africa, and in particular, in neighbouring Angola. Only when the cold war ended did human rights matter. But by then President Mobutu had amassed a fortune and Zaire was spent.

This year’s 52th anniversary of Mobutu’s ascent to the presidency of Congo will be no cause for celebration. Congo had just emerged from the catastrophe of Belgian rule: King Leopold II, arguably the most egregious of all colonialists, turned it into a personal fiefdom, killing and enslaving the population to enrich himself with ivory and rubber. But when the CIA helped Belgium assassinate independence prime minister Patrice Lumumba, opportunity knocked for Joseph Desire Mobutu, who had worked as a reporter and editor before returning to the army and climbing the ranks.

In 1963 he was invited by president John F Kennedy to the White House and effectively recruited to the capitalist side in the cold war’s African battleground. Two years later he declared himself head of state, renamed his country Zaire, renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko Koko Ngbendu wa za Banga (meaning “the all-powerful warrior who, because of endurance and an inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake”) and adopted his infamous leopard-skin hat.

America, his patron, appeared willing to bankroll or turn a blind eye to any excess. Mobutu rapidly set the tone for his rule by ordering the public hanging of four former ministers at a sports stadium for an alleged coup plot. He continued with a Machiavellian combination of murder, detention and torture on the one hand and bribery, corruption and patronage on the other. The mineral-rich nation’s coffers were looted on a mind-bending scale as Mobutu amassed an estimated fortune of $8,1 MILLARDS and lavish properties around the world. “When he left power he was universally excoriated as Africa’s greatest kleptocrat,” noted Mobutu’s obituary in the Guardian in 1997.

The end of the cold war had left Mobutu living on borrowed time and, suffering from prostate cancer, he fled the country when Kabila’s troops marched a thousand miles to Kinshasa, the capital, in 1997. He died in Morocco shortly after, aged 66.

WHERE ARE THE 8,1 MILLARDS FROM THE CONGO- ZAIRE RESSOURCES?.

In brief

By 1998 some $650 million in frozen Swiss bank deposits of the late Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who is thought to have amassed a fortune of $5-10 billion during his 20 years in power, had been handed over to the government in Manila.

In June the Swiss government extended a freeze for three months on bank accounts linked to former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

The decision came days before a freeze on all the ex-president's Swiss accounts was due to expire, which could have allowed the money to be returned to the Duvalier family.

end of infobox

Key facts

1997: Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo requests legal assistance from Switzerland to trace alleged assets of toppled dictator Mobutu.
1997: Swiss government freezes assets worth SFr10 million deposited by Mobutu and his family.
2001: Canton Vaud approves claims by Swiss businessman from Mobutu funds for outstanding bills, but government blocks the payout.
2001: Mobutu's villa on Lake Geneva auctioned off for SFr3.1 million.
2003: Government confirms freeze of Mobutu assets.
2006: Federal Court orders partial unfreeze of assets and payment of SFr2.35 million to Swiss businessman.

end of infobox

Mobutu

In 1965 General Mobutu Sese Seko came to power in Congo, a Belgian colony until 1960, in a coup and renamed the country Zaire in 1971.

After decades of dictatorship, Mobutu was ousted by the alliance under Laurent-Désiré Kabila who proclaimed himself president of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997.

Zaire's new rulers accused Mobutu, who was forced into exile in Morocco where he died shortly afterwards, of siphoning off government funds and stashing away assets worth billions of francs in Switzerland.

When Kabila died in 2001 he was succeeded by his son, Joseph Kabila.

In response to a request for legal assistance by Kinshasa in 1997, the Swiss authorities froze SFr10 million deposited by Mobutu and his family. They also auctioned off Mobutu's villa on Lake Geneva for an additional SFr3.1 million in 2001.

Congo Government Debt to GDP  

Congo recorded a government debt equivalent to 117.70 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2017. Government Debt to GDP in Congo averaged 104.85 percent from 2000 until 2017, reaching an all time high of 204.40 percent in 2003 and a record low of 22.20 percent in 2010.

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Congo Government	Last	Previous	Highest	Lowest	Unit
Government Debt to GDP	117.70	115.00	204.40	22.20	percent	[+]
Government Budget	-1.60	-0.10	26.10	-19.65	percent of GDP	[+]
Military Expenditure	503.00	491.00	503.00	21.00	USD Million	[+]
Government Budget Value	17889.81	-51539.07	202341.00	-192333.48	CDF Million	[+]
Government Revenues	439591.44	558757.15	590355.50	87123.86	CDF Million	[+]
Fiscal Expenditure	421701.63	610296.22	610296.22	85917.78	CDF Million	[+]
Credit Rating	25.00					[+]

Congo Government Debt to GDP

Generally, Government debt as a percent of GDP is used by investors to measure a country ability to make future payments on its debt, thus affecting the country borrowing costs and government bond yields. This page provides - Congo Government Debt To GDP - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news. Congo Government Debt to GDP - actual data, historical chart and calendar of releases - was last updated on April of 2018.

	Actual	Previous	Highest	Lowest	Dates	Unit	Frequency
	117.70	115.00	204.40	22.20	2000 - 2017	percent	Yearly

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DR Congo - External Debt

Revised data show that the Congolese economy expanded 3.7% in the year 2017, an acceleration from 2016’s print. Nevertheless, the economy has still not reached the rates of growth it recorded during the commodities super cycle but did exceed the Central Bank’s estimates due to higher prices and demand for Congolese commodities. While a favorable external outlook continues to bode well for the mineral-rich country, the overall economic outlook is becoming more uncertain. President Kabila is set to sign into law a highly-controversial mining code despite strong opposition from businesses. Additionally, opposition political parties in the country endorsed a single candidate for the delayed presidential elections last scheduled for December 2017; the electoral process has been mired by violence and civil unrest and elections have been postponed multiple times.

LES^SENCE 

Abstract

I review the recent literature on satisfaction and happiness, identify some plausible next steps to take at the frontiers of the research field and offer some suggestions to facilitate those steps. Using partial correlation techniques, substantial levels of covariation are found among the variables that are used in predictions of satisfaction and happiness with life as a whole from satisfaction with specific domains (e.g. family life, health). Using path analysis, confirmation is found in a dozen domains for a model which has satisfaction as a function of a perceived goal-achievement gap, and the latter as a function of comparisons with previous best experience and the status of average folks. Using discriminant analysis, satisfaction with family life is found to be a powerful and predominant discriminator among three groups, identified as Frustrated (dissatisfied and unhappy), Resigned (satisfied and unhappy) and Achievers (satisfied and happy).

Urban plan Shenzen Experiment

We will be starting a new monthly profile of cities around the world that have experienced unprecedented growth. Hopefully this will give insight into some of the massive challenges that planners and governments face in accommodating this growth and what some of these plans (or lack thereof) have produced.

This month we will take a look at Shenzhen, China. Known as the “instant city”, Shenzhen is a major urban area of almost 10 million people in China’s Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. Owing to China’s economic liberalization, the area became China’s first – and arguably most successful – Special Economic Zone. Since the establishment of the Special Economic Zone in the late 1970’s, Shenzhen has seen unprecedented growth from a village of 30,000 to a city of over 325 times that.The small fishing village of Shenzhen was singled out in the 1979 to be one of the first Special Economic Zones (SEZ) under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the “father of modern China”. Since Shenzhen is so close to the then rapidly growing Hong Kong, the SEZ was meant to be an experimental ground for development. The idea was that Shenzhen would be able to provide cheaper labor and land that could accommodate the private sector looking to expand their Hong Kong operations. This concept proved extremely successful. Through strong government planning and infrastructural development Shenzhen saw an average annual population growth around 30% for the next 3 decades. This was unequalled almost anywhere in the world. In 2007, it had a GDP of almost $100 billion dollars, ranking it fourth among all Chinese cities, and Shenzhen’s GDP per capita surpassed $10,000, the first Chinese city to do so. Shenzhen is also known as one of the cleanest large Chinese cities with over 50% of streets lined with trees and large parks and green spaces available to its residents.

However for a city that experienced the type of rapid growth, it was very fortunate to have had forward thinking city officials and planners to help manage its success. Shenzhen officials remarkably were able to implement a total of three master plans within the span of 25 years; each adding to the fuel and direction of growth.

The first master plan of 1986 put in six “cluster cities” that concentrated growth and infrastructure along three highways. In the ten years to follow this, unprecedented growth and lack of zoning controls lead to major urban sprawl in Shenzhen. By 1996, the urban sprawl that had started only 17 years previously covered over 645 sq. kilometers of land, the same size as 11 islands of Manhattan. Shenzhen was slowly running out of land and most of the structures being built were low-density manufacturing and housing units. City planners were also concerned about livability and taking a page from more developed nations, created a new 1000 sq. kilometer growth boundary; the first of its kind in China. “Periphery growth clusters” were also implemented around the existing six “cluster cities” to encourage growth and greater density while even more infrastructure, highways and a massive subway system began construction.

By the mid 2000’s when a third master plan was being drawn up; planners faced another dilemma entirely. The amount of space that could actually be used for development was dwindling, and quickly. Only about 100 sq. kilometers of legally developable land was left, and officials feared that without more space that the economic engine of Shenzhen would come to a halt. Officials were faced with a hard choice. Instead of diminishing the green growth boundary, Chinese officials designated more than 200 square kilometers of occupied land as “urban regeneration areas”. The idea was to clear dilapidated low-density buildings and properties to build newer, higher density facilities. The government opted to buy back occupied land from private stakeholders and would then build new facilities themselves or give large plots back to developers. This plan was reinforced by stricter building codes that encouraged higher density industries and residential buildings. This tactic proved to be successful; Shenzhen has added almost 3 million people since the last master plan was put in place.

This unprecedented growth however did not come without its consequences. Besides the ever present problems of pollution and traffic that come with large cities; Shenzhen had a massive housing problem. Chinese “urban villages” or slums popped up illegally almost overnight on the designated growth boundaries and open spaces. Workers’ conditions and quality of life for the millions of migrants were often quite appalling with little in the way of government intervention. The problems that these workers faced is beyond the scope of this post but the immense dilemma of how to deal with millions of migrants moving into a city within such a short time categorizes many of the toughest problems that these mega-cities face. Even thought there are many problems that Shenzhen still faces, it will forever be in the history books as a city that experienced an unprecedented rapid and sustained growth rate for over three decades.

COMMUNITY IMPACT FOUND GIVING CAMPAIGN.

You’re a change-maker.

You believe in our community and you want to help make it better.

We get it. We’re with you.

As a Community Foundation we spend every day working to improve the lives of everyone in All Countries, and our true brilliance and success lies in our ability to leverage the giving of many to make the greatest possible impact.

Together, we can create transformative change.

Giving to the Community Impact Fund:
This comprehensive, flexible fund addresses a broad range of needs, including future needs that often cannot be anticipated at the time of your gift.

The Community Impact Fund helps the community:Support long-term solutions.
Respond quickly to community emergencies. Meet changing social, cultural, educational and environmental needs. Distributions from the Community Impact Fund also support the Community Impact competitive grantmaking process.
A Community Leadership Committee made up of community members, board and staff review grant proposals submitted by area nonprofits and select projects that demonstrate long-term commitment to three priority areas:

Strong Nonprofits: Proposals that build capacity to meet community needs, create collective impact, and ensure collaborative data and investment in leadership.

Thriving Families: Proposals that build increased self-sufficiency, create success in the lives of young people, and ensure lasting commitment to healthy neighborhoods

Vibrant Culture: Proposals that build appreciation for the arts, create opportunities for increased social offerings, and ensure openness to a growing diverse population.

The Community Impact Fund also helps the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque to drive positive change through civic dialogue and promoting effective strategies for community collaboration. We call this “collective impact”—encouraging collaboration and building partnerships to identify our community’s critical challenges and create the change our community needs. Our partners include nonprofits, donors, government leaders, business people, faith-based organizations – all of whom care deeply about improving the quality of life in our region.

 LES^SENCE SATISFICATION OF HAPPPINES URBAN PLAN {CONGO ZAIRE}.

Structural Points.

1- VIADUCT CONSTRUCTION inspired by {VIADUCKT -ZÜRICH SWISS}.

2- ETHICS URBAN PLAN inspired by {MARAGALL -BARCELONA}.

3- REDBULL SPORT CAMPUS. inspired by {U.S.A SPORT TALENT CAMPUS}.

4- NELSON MANDELA CULTURE CENTER inspired by { KOSMOS - ZÜRICH}.

5- U.S.A ARMY BASE inspired by China Architecture.

6- GREEN BOONS - PARKS -COMMERCE - FLUSING SCHOOLS inspired by { amsterdam}

7- DOWNHILL FORCE DISTRICT. inspired by { Buffer Zone}.

8- AFRO TOWN SUSTAINABLE COMERCE. Inspired by { CHINA TOWN}.

9- IMPACT HUB COMPLEX inspired by { IMPACT HUB ZÜRICH}.

0- ENERGY RENOVABLE GARBEG INDUSTRY inspired by { zürich First europe Industry}.
1- GREEN LABEL. inspirred by ( Trump constructions}

Stucturals Pictures Points.

5-U.S.A ARMY BASE 

1- VIADUCT CONSTRUCTION.

2- ETHICS URBAN PLAN.

3- REDBULL SPORT CAMPUS

4- NELSON MANDELA CULTURE CENTER.

6- GREEN BOONS PlANTAGE.

6-1 GREEN BOONS PARKS.

6-2 GREEN BOONS COMMERCE.

7- DOWNHILL FORCE DISTRIC.

7-1 DOWNHIILL FORCE DISTRIC FLUSING SCHOOLL





8- AFRO TOWNS SUSTAINABLE COMMERCE.




9- IMPACT HUB CONO- ZAIRE




10- ENERGY RENOVABLE GARBEG INDUSTRY



10.1 ENERGY RENOVABLE GARBEG INDUSTRY





11- GREEN LABEL CONSTRUCTIONS




LES^SENCE SUSTAINABLE SWISS GROUP.



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