A 7 Billionth Person - 1 In 7 Odds Of Being Hungry

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For those who think it's a "greek" thing...

See Cartoons by Cartoon by John Darkow - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon

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My Friend Is...

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International Women's Day 2009 - Gender facts

Networking ...

• Women use 20,000 words a day while men only use 7,000

Global Issues ...

• Females in developing countries on average carry 20 litres of water per day over 6 km
• Globally women account for the majority of people aged over 60 and over 80
• Pregnant women in Africa are 180 times more likely to die than in Western Europe
• 530,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth each year
• World population hit 6,872,741,131 on 1 January 2009
• Of 1.2 billion people living in poverty worldwide, 70% are women
• 80% of the world's 27 million refugees are women
• Women own around only 1% of the world's land
• AIDS sees women's life expectancy of 43 in Uganda and Zambia
• 5 people are added to the world's population every 2 seconds
• Women are 2/3 of the 1 billion+ illiterate adults who have no access to basic education

Innovation ...

• Globally women comprise 42% internet users (Italy 37% ... US & Canada 51%)
• In OECD countries women comrpise only 30 per cent of degrees in science and technology
• Women's representation in computer and information sciences workforce is around 30% globally
• Female inventors still only account for around 10% of the US inventor population

Business / Finance ...

• Women control $14 trillion in assets and this should grow to $22 trillion over next 10 years
• Women comprise 21 of the 37 million people living below the poverty line in the US
• Only in Japan and Peru are women more active in starting a business than men
• Women spend more time researching before they invest than men do

Media / Arts ...

• Only 21% of all news subjects (people interviewed or whom the news is about) are female
• Women less than 1% department heads, editors, media owners but third of working journalists
• 80% of UK purchasing decisions are made by women but 83% of 'creatives' are men

Work ...

• Women do two-thirds of the world's work but receive only 10% of the world's income
• Women's education is the most powerful predictor of lower fertility rates
• One year out of college women earn 20% less than men and 10 years later 31% less
• Women on average are away from workforce for 14.7 years compared to 1.6 years for men
• The biggest EU gender pay gap is in Cyprus and Estonia at 25% then Slovakia at 24%

Government ...

• 56% of women who voted supported Obama compared to only 49% of men voted for Obama
• Until 20 years ago there had never been more than 5% women MPs globally
• Benazir Bhutto was the first woman prime minister of a muslim country (assassinated 27/12/07)
• From the 27 EU member states, UK ranks 15 for women's representation in national Parliaments
• From 1945 to 1995 the percentage of women MPs worldwide increased four-fold

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"What started out as a Sydney event, turned into a global movement"

info in Greek, English

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Did You Know?

Did You Know 3.0 for 2008 - Newly Revised Edition Created by Karl Fisch, and modified by Scott McLeod; Globalization & The Information Age.

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Tragic and all too familiar

Photos from the bushfires still raging in Victoria, Australia and photos from the summer 2007 (from June until August) fires in Greece.
Too tragic. Too familiar.

More about the Victorian bushfires.

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2009

When I was a kid, my mother told me a New Year's Eve taradiddle her mother had told her that If you had unwashed laundry, unironed clothes or a dirty home when the New Year came... then all year long you'd be 'cursed' with endless loads of laundry, piles of ironing and dust that never quit.

In short, whatever shape the house was in on New Year's Eve, that was how your home would be all year long.

This old wives' tale inadvertently stuck in one of my brain cells that should have been used for more worthwhile information and came back to me on larger, global scale on New Year's Eve.

As 2009 punched in for work and 2008 retired, Israel was bombarding Gaza, the largest open air prison they created for Palestinians. The US military was still occupying Iraq. Hot spots all over the world with unfathomable despair and pain. Greece in an upheaval. Our home - the world- was definitely a mess on New Year's Eve and according to the housekeeping myth the mess will be around all year.

Here's to Peace. May it come in the form of large broom and sweep across the globe and next New Year's Eve find all nations and peoples unmessed.

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Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty

A short story...

Yesterday a poorly dressed and unkempt man approached me on the street with an outstretched hand and before he could ask, I mustered 70cents from my pockets and placed it on his palm. He looked down at his hand and then surprisingly deep into my eyes and told me I had a good heart. He squeezed the change in his fist and tapped his heart in a gesture of 'thank you'. I wished him well "na sai kala", shamefully humbled how grateful he was for such a measly amount and felt guilty I didn’t have a whole euro coin on me.
Is he still hungry? Most probably, yes.
Did my action solve his condition? Definitely not.
Did it make me feel better? Only for a few minutes.
Did it make him feel better? Only for a few milliseconds.

I am now blogging about his poverty. This means I have access to a computer and the Internet, which means I am better off than 90% (!) of the world.

Every time I give money this way to a fellow human being I feel incredibly awkward but for a slight change of circumstances I could have been or still might be in their shoes.

A long story...

With recent world economic events, we will be witnessing more people become unemployed, turned out of their homes because of bank loans, psychologically and economically broken and in turn hopeless and, more importantly, hungry.

With the climate changes that have affected the planet, there will be more hurricanes, outrageous bursts of rainfalls, flooding, earth slides, sudden horrific droughts and raging fires that will turn more people into homeless populations that will require immediate emergency care before the plague sets in. Those that survive will, in turn, become economic refugees in search of a new home and hope.

Poverty eradicated? As long as capitalism rules the planet, poverty will also exist. The wealth produced is not being distributed equally. People will be sold and exploited for cheap labor as human trafficking will continue to be the backbone of the rotten system that keeps it alive. The intervention of major developed countries, particularly the US, and local war lord puppets will keep holding entire nations hostage for oil, for gas or because that particular land is key to some other money-making scheme that will keep a developed country developed and the exploited country without sovereignty, without democracy, without a light out of the tunnel for its people.

The tumor has to come out, the system has to change. Man, the reigning animal on this planet, has to stop eating its own kind for profits. We need to provide all people with the right to live not just survive.

A story with no end...

Do the rich need to be THAT rich? Do the poor need to be THAT poor?
Why aren't governments looking out for ALL their citizens? Why do so-called "organized and developed states" allow people to live on the streets, go hungry and remain illiterate? Why aren't rich countries helping out poor ones? Why aren’t rich countries eradicating poverty within THEIR borders? The questions are child-like yet they beat against my skull every day with no logical adult explanation to shut them up.

We blog to learn more about poverty on Blog Action Day, because we need to help, we need to find a cause to counterbalance the insanity of it all even if it's merely giving aspirin to a terminally fatal cancer.

The moral of the story...

Childish post you say. I agree.
I can't speak/blog rationally about poverty.
There is no rationality to poverty.
At least not in the age of sending space shuttles searching for habitable planets while this one festers.


The Blog Action Day abridged story version...

Blog Action Day means action and not rants, so here's how I am fooling myself into thinking I made a difference against poverty recently:

• brought Fair Trade gifts for friends’ birthdays from Hunger Site,
• gave a donation to UNICEF's Trick & Treat campaign via Facebook,
• donated music CDs , scarf and handbag to "Deytero Heri / Δεύτερο Χέρι" and brought stuff from them to support this Greek second-hand charity shop,
• donated daughters’ hardly worn & outgrown shoes and clothes to a poor Roma family in the area,
• brought chocolate and ‘Zapatista coffee’ from “Sporos”, to show my solidarity to the fighting farmers of Central and Latin America.

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One Issue, Thousands of Voices

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

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Moms. You can't live with them, you have no life without 'em.

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How rich ARE you?

Every year we gaze enviously at the lists of the richest people in world. Wondering what it would be like to have that sort of cash. But where would you sit on one of those lists? Here's your chance to find out: www.globalrichlist.com

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Blog Action Day 2007

Confessing

I feel that the environment-friendly things I do in my small, humble, life are tiny compared to the environmental chaos around me. Sometimes I doubt whether I really can make a difference because every evening the news programs bear witness that the planet isn't changing... it HAS changed. A variety of "weird" natural disasters taking place in all corners of the world flash across the TV screen and I wonder if my full recycle bin will take a load off Earth and if my energy efficient light bulbs will help stop draining our planet's resources. I feel guilty that I brought my children into a world where I can't guarantee them clean air and sufficient water. I shudder at the thought that their children will look at picture books with forests, while attending school in oxygen tents, asking their teachers what all that green looks like.

At work

As a network admin at my workplace, I keep nagging users to shut down their computers, screens and printers instead of leaving them on stand-by, not to print stuff aimlessly without thinking about wasting paper, toner and electricity. I ask them to place used paper in the printers' trays to get maximum use by printing on the clean, unprinted side of the sheet. Sometimes I feel that I am making more enemies than a point because well... we, Greeks, take a long time to condition ourselves to a new way of doing things. Recycling and conserving Mother Earth's resources has not -yet- become second nature to us and it seems most people are interested in the present, not the future (Proposal: Greek Orthodox doctrine should add reincarnation as a possible afterlife... then most Greeks would be concerned about what kind of world they'd land back in again).

Doing our small part

At home, we have a solar-powered water heater, most of the appliances are class A energy efficient, we have switched to energy-saving light bulbs, we recycle everything from the jam jar to the cereal box, we only shower with water-saving handheld shower heads that you can turn off and on while showering. We are particularly proud of how much toilet water we save because I have placed plastic bowls in the bathroom sinks (directly under the faucets) that collect all the "dirty" water instead of letting it go down the drain. The water from these plastic bowls is used to flush the toilets instead of using clear water. We are also more alert -consumer wise- buying less therefore making less garbage and ensuring what we buy is recyclable. I use a large, re-usable IKEA shopping bag for my groceries instead of placing them in small plastic bags each time.

Proposal

On this Blog Action Day I would like to send out the idea of re-fillable, re-usable containers for a variety of products. Take for example your fabric softener. Every time you run out you buy another bottle of softener (some of us recycle the old, some don't). Wouldn't it be eco-friendlier for the consumer to go to the store with their empty container, go to the aisle with the barrel of softener, place the container under the tap and just re-fill the container with softener? Huh? Wouldn't this be a neat idea? This could apply to a variety of products (liquid detergents, powder detergents, juices, maybe even milk). If you are an important fabric softener CEO reading my humble blog, please feel free to exploit this idea... Just help relieve the Earth from more plastic bottles and boolsheet.

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"A note of hope around this troubled world"

Although I'm not a US citizen and can't take any credit, I am smiling from ear to ear. Give yourself a pat on the back my American friends! The world has let out a small sigh of relief but we're still keeping our fingers crossed. Hope is alive. Michael Moore's newsletter says it best:

November 8th, 2006

Friends,

You did it! We did it! The impossible has happened: A majority of Americans have soundly and forcefully removed Bush's party from control of the House of Representatives. And, sometime today perhaps, we may learn that the same miracle has happened in the Senate. Whatever the outcome, the American people have made two things crystal clear: End this war, and stop Mr. Bush from doing any more damage to this country we love. That is what this election was about. Nothing else. Just that. And it's a message that has sent shock waves throughout Washington -- and a note of hope around this troubled world.

Now the real work begins. Unless we stay on top of these Democrats to do the right thing, they will do what they've always done: Screw it up. Big Time. They helped Bush start this war, and now they should make amends.

But let's take a day to rejoice and revel in a rare victory for our side -- the side that doesn't believe in unprovoked invasions of other countries. This is your day, my friends. You have worked hard for it. I can't tell you how proud I am to count all of you as part of the greater American mainstream we now occupy. Thank you for all the time you gave this week to get out the vote. Some of you have been at this since the large demonstrations of February 2003 when we tried to stop the war before it started. Only 10-20% of the country agreed with us at that time. Remember how lonely that was? Some people were even booed! Now, 60% of the country agrees with our position. They are us and we are them. What a nice, strange, hopeful feeling.

A woman, for the first time in our history, will be Speaker of the House. The attempt to ban all abortion in the conservative state of South Dakota was defeated. Laws to raise the minimum wage were passed. Democrats were elected to fill Tom DeLay's and Mark Foley's seats. Detroit's John Conyers, Jr. is going to be the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The Democratic governor of Michigan beat the CEO from Amway. The little township next to where I live in Michigan voted Democratic for the first time since... ever. And on and on and on. The good news will continue throughout today. Let's enjoy it. Savor it. And use it to get Congress to finally listen to the majority.

If you want to do one thing today, send an email or a letter to both of your senators and your member of Congress and tell them, in no uncertain terms, what this election means: End the war -- and don't let George W. Bush get away with any more of his bright ideas.

Congratulations, again! Now let's go find a spine for the Dems to do the job we've sent them there to do.

Yours in victory (for once!),

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

P.S. Thanks for all those photos you sent me of you with your brooms at your polling places. They're still coming in and we're posting them here throughout the day. And for those of you who asked how "Sicko" is coming along, the answer is: better than we ever expected! We're hard at work in the edit room and it will be in theaters in June. Thanks again, everyone, for your support.

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Waiting and wondering if there will be any change...

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Stop Tricks for Cheaper Chocolate Treats

It's that time of year again. No, I don't mean THAT time. I mean THIS time.

This year, however, it's time to participate in a little electronic activism by signing the petition at petitionsite.com sponsored by the non-profit organisation Care2.com:

What's scarier than ghosts or goblins this Halloween? How about chocolate treats made from child labor?

Almost half of the world's cocoa is produced on West African plantations where widespread instances of child slavery, human trafficking, and forced labor have been reported.

Unless multi-billion dollar candy companies like Nestle and Mars (the makers of M&Ms) take the lead, most, if not all the chocolate in your local supermarket will continue to be made at the cost of human life.

The solution? Chocolate that's Fair Trade Certified. Fair Trade standards do not permit forced labor or child labor and ensure that farmers are paid a fair price for their cocoa.

This Halloween, put an end to "tricks" for cheaper chocolate treats. Ask Mars and Nestle to address these human rights violations by offering fair trade chocolate in their product line!

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Campaign against legalising "paedophile political party"

in Greek...

ΠΑΓΚΟΣΜΙΑ ΕΚΣΤΡΑΤΕΙΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ «ΧΑΜΟΓΕΛΟ ΤΟΥ ΠΑΙΔΙΟΥ» - Όχι στη νομιμοποίηση «του κόμματος των παιδοφίλων»
Όλα τα στοιχεία και οι υπογραφές που θα συγκεντρωθούν θα αποσταλούν από «Το Χαμόγελο του Παιδιού» στην αρμόδια Επιτροπή Συλλογής Υπογραφών. [αναλυτικότερα εδώ]

When I first heard about the Dutch having a Paedophile Party I asked myself "What are you people smoking over there?"
Today, I became aware of this campaign by a greek non-government organization and defender of children's rights "To Hamogelo tou Paidiou" (Children's Smile). You can find the Greek text here. The following is my translation from Greek, in hopes of more people participating and not allowing this atrocity pass.

in English...

UNBELIEVABLE RULING: Legalization of the Paedophile Party by the Dutch Government!

Following the decision of The Hague to allow the founding of such party, based on freedom of expression, freedom of voting and getting elected, the Dutch government formally acknowledged the newly founded Party of Paedophiles (PNVD).

In this case, freedom of expression acts against children’s rights.

Basic goals of the party are:
Legalising sexual contact between adults and minors from age 12.
Legalization of child-pornography material for personal use.
Furthermore, the PVND is opposed to any legislation that forbids sexual contact between humans and animals.

Every aware citizen in Europe, and all over the world, must protest legalization of this political party.

Finland, currently European Union’s Presidency, is planning on petitioning the EU to put a stop to the Dutch Paedophile Party. The request by the Finnish Prime Minister will be rendered to Mr. Franco Frattini, EU Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security, at the end of this year.

Within the framework of the informal Meeting of EU Ministers of Justice and Internal Affairs, which took place Sept.20-22 in Tampere, the Finnish citizens handed in their first signatures to their Minister of Justice.

The more people all over the world sign this petition, the greater its force will be!

We ask all of you to participate in this universal protest by sending in your name and e-mail.
Click here and add your vote.

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Faces will also be searched in US airports

According to this article "behavior detection officers" will be on the lookout for the following:

How does one keep a straight face through all this?

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If oil had NEVER been discovered, would the Middle East have EVER become an issue?

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Lebanon. Bombing the peace keepers out of the way.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING BY MARIE OKABE DEPUTY SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
UN HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK
Thursday, July 27, 2006

Asked about Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's question on why the United Nations had operated its outpost in Khiam even amid the fighting, the Spokeswoman noted that UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been present in the area since 1978, on a UN Security Council mandate.

She noted that the military observers at Khiam were posed in a well-marked and established outpost. Also, the United Nations had received repeated assurances that they would not be attacked, and repeated calls were made by UNIFIL, by officials in New York and by the Secretary-General to Israeli officials concerning the safety of UNIFIL personnel.

Ultimately, she said, the United Nations had guarantees that the outpost would not come under fire.

Asked about the Secretary-General's reaction to the failure, so far, by the Security Council to adopt a Presidential Statement on the death of the observers at Khiam, the Spokeswoman said that he was disappointed that the Council was not able to pronounce itself on an important statement on the death of the four observers.

Asked whether the Secretary-General would retract his Tuesday statement about the "apparently deliberate" targeting of the outpost, given an e-mail that allegedly counters the United Nations' understanding of the events, the Spokeswoman responded, "No."

UN patrol base in El- Khiam, East of South Lebanon, which received a direct areal bomb hit from IDF where four UN Observers lost their life.
Southern Lebanon, 27 July 2006. UN Photo

Nothing sane to add... It seems now that all hell is officially loose once the peace keepers start getting bombed and... ignored.

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