Half Baked

Bob who?

On Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao said he'd never heard of anti-poverty campaigner and Live 8 organiser Geldof.

Asking "Who?" several times, Liu finally shook his head and said "I am sorry" after a reporter asked for comment on the 51-year-old Irish rocker's claims that China was protecting the Sudanese government because it provides six percent of China's oil.

Link to IOL: Geldof's scolding lands on deaf Chinese ears

 

OK, this is a pretty amusing (despite the serious subject) response to the Bob Geldof comment about China and Darfur.

China Accused of Prolonging Sudan Bloodshed Because of Oil

"The reason why it has not been resolved is because of China," the Associated Press quoted Geldof as saying in Athens on Monday.

"The Chinese protect the Khartoum government, who are killers, and they will not allow a vote in the [U.N.] Security Council," he said, attributing Beijing's stance to its oil ties with Sudan. Link to China Accused of Prolonging Sudan Bloodshed Because of Oil -- 04/11/2006

 

At least something is not the fault of the US.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Head-to-head: Africa's food crisis

 

An official from the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), Nicholas Crawford, and Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, a pan-Africanist and Director of Justice Africa, debate what is causing Africa's deepening food crisis and what the solutions might be.

Link to BBC NEWS | Africa | Head-to-head: Africa's food crisis

 

This is an interesting debate that shows how someone who approaches relief from a political mindset and someone who approaches it from a humanitarian mindset can differ greatly in their views how to deal with extreme poverty in Africa. A lot of it boils down to whether war causes poverty or poverty causes war and discussions of the motives of westerners sending aid. In the end, I found myself getting really upset by Mr Abdul-Rahim's comments, but I'm glad to know this viewpoint.

I doubt that a victim of a famine is willing to wait for pan African unity to get the food they need to survive. 

 

Also, I thought this map was cool...

MAPPING THE CRISIS

A country by country guide to the worst affected states

 

 

UK Opinions on using tax dollars for poverty eradication in Africa

"Should we be proud that Britain is leading the world in the drive to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged?

Or do you think that the money could be better spent on domestic problems? "

Link to Telegraph | News | World poverty or NHS - what should come first?

 

The comment stream that follows this UK editorial are remarkably consistent in their criticism of this (or it seems any) effort to help eradicate extreme poverty. It's a pretty depressing read.

Blogswana: Blogging for others in Botswana

"Fascinating sounding project unveiled yesterday by the folks at the Committee to Protect Bloggers.  The project is called Blogswana and the idea is that they will train 20 university students from Botswana in journalism and blogging, then those students will go into the field once a month and interview some one who does not have access to the web or blogging.  "
Link to Blogswana: Blogging for others in AIDS-struck Botswana - The Social Software Weblog

This sounds like a great way to hear directly from people who are suffering without a lot of traditional editorial filters.

NPR : A Jobs Program with a Spiritual Twist

Fighting Poverty in America

A Jobs Program with a Spiritual Twist

"One employer that has found success with the program is Orlando's Florida Hospital. In the past five years, the hospital has hired 35 graduates. Judy Bond, the hospital's human resources director, says three out of four of the hires from the program have gone on to get more training -- becoming nurses or sonogram technicians, for example -- and moving up from entry-level jobs."

This is a really interesting story that tackles the sticky notion of people remaining poor not because of the circumstances they are in but rather, in part, because of how they act. I personally believe that both are factors, but you rarely hear character discussed because any discussion of it seems to open up a can of converse worms and you end up discussing how many people of bad character get rich.

The crooked smile

 This expression is a little more nuanced than what I expected to see from a baby. It may just be that the camera captured him in transition between his usual two states - fussing or giggling.

A New Day

This is a  picture I took in Alaska's Denali National Park. We rode in this bus for 7 hours.

Random Posts

OK, here's a good one. As you may know I work for Onfolio, and part of what Onfolio does is make blogging and web-publishing a little easier by integrating it with the process of reading RSS feeds and capturing content into Onfolio collections. I've recently been doing a ton of online demos of Onfolio to librarians at colleges, universities and medical centers, and during those demos, I do a search on PubMed and then I blog about one of the articles I find to show how you can blog about something - thereby making your colleagues aware of it - without interrupting the flow of your discovery. So, my blog has recently consisted of these quick posts I make during demos where I have a link to some crazy-obscure (to me) article on PubMed about Myocardial-whatever and its effects on Post-phalngeal peptide transmiters or some similary incomprehensible article written by medical researchers for medical researchers.

The reason this is funny is that Highbeam Research added me to their blogroll because I was using their blogging feature, so I had a bunch of people coming to my messy blog all of a sudden. Well, I've cleaned it up, and am hoping to blog better things now that there may be more people finding me.

Aid agencies give their take on the G8

This is an interesing article from Agence France. I think the following claim deserves a little investigation, though...

"Meanwhile, a Christian Aid study said free trade had left Africa 272 billion dollars poorer over the past 20 years. By opening their markets up to foreign imports in return for aid donations, struggling countries in sub-Saharan Africa have lost revenue worth billions, said the document, entitled "The Economics of Failure: The Real Cost of 'Free' Trade."

from: Rich countries accused of doing more harm than good to poor nations
source: Agence France Presse English, June 20, 2005.
via: HighBeam™ Research