Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Monday, November 06, 2006
Friday, November 03, 2006
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Sick health
The plans of private health schemes to jack up their rates by up to 23 percent next year drives something of a coach and horses through the government’s dreams of an election year prize freeze since it would add around one percentage point to the inflation of early 2007 but there are reasons other than sheer greed for the proposed increase.
The main justification is, of course, cost pressures. The current worldwide trend is for health costs to double every four or five years and Argentina is by no means immune from that trend — the relentless increases in the prices of medicine, technology and equipment in general mean that hospitals, clinics and laboratories have all become far more expensive. As for wage costs, doctors remain scandalously underpaid but the trade union representing non-medical staff (whose veteran boss Carlos West Ocampo recognizes that the costs of health schemes have risen) managed to extract its benchmark 19 percent pay increase for 2006.
Furthermore, far from being subsidized (like, for example, public transport), private health schemes are taxed (including IVA value-added taxation) — even if they have been allowed to run up tax arrears of nearly two billion pesos in the difficult years since the 2002 devaluation and even if the government is more open to the idea of exempting them from the cheque tax than to granting them the rate increase sought (denied yesterday).
But if the private health schemes have several valid arguments to justify their increases, long-suffering patients have every right to feel aggrieved (and Ombudsman Eduardo Mondino has already served notice that he will be resisting the increases on their behalf). Yet a more imaginative approach to this problem than price freeze electioneering could rescue the government from this cruel dilemma between driving the private health schemes into the ground and punishing the general public. Argentina’s health system is hopelessly broke, yes, yet underfunding is not especially the reason — Argentina spends several billion dollars on health care every year and definitely belongs to the more generous half of the world’s countries in this respect.
If instead of unimaginatively muscling price freezes, the government thus attempted some far-reaching reforms to improve the quality of spending, demonizing the middlemen instead of the health care providers, it might yet be possible to control both prices and costs — and even offer doctors something approaching decent pay.
End.
The main justification is, of course, cost pressures. The current worldwide trend is for health costs to double every four or five years and Argentina is by no means immune from that trend — the relentless increases in the prices of medicine, technology and equipment in general mean that hospitals, clinics and laboratories have all become far more expensive. As for wage costs, doctors remain scandalously underpaid but the trade union representing non-medical staff (whose veteran boss Carlos West Ocampo recognizes that the costs of health schemes have risen) managed to extract its benchmark 19 percent pay increase for 2006.
Furthermore, far from being subsidized (like, for example, public transport), private health schemes are taxed (including IVA value-added taxation) — even if they have been allowed to run up tax arrears of nearly two billion pesos in the difficult years since the 2002 devaluation and even if the government is more open to the idea of exempting them from the cheque tax than to granting them the rate increase sought (denied yesterday).
But if the private health schemes have several valid arguments to justify their increases, long-suffering patients have every right to feel aggrieved (and Ombudsman Eduardo Mondino has already served notice that he will be resisting the increases on their behalf). Yet a more imaginative approach to this problem than price freeze electioneering could rescue the government from this cruel dilemma between driving the private health schemes into the ground and punishing the general public. Argentina’s health system is hopelessly broke, yes, yet underfunding is not especially the reason — Argentina spends several billion dollars on health care every year and definitely belongs to the more generous half of the world’s countries in this respect.
If instead of unimaginatively muscling price freezes, the government thus attempted some far-reaching reforms to improve the quality of spending, demonizing the middlemen instead of the health care providers, it might yet be possible to control both prices and costs — and even offer doctors something approaching decent pay.
End.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Limitations?
So is it possible to see the limitations of thought and give it its right place, and therefore giving the right place to thought brings about clarity - right?
We mean by right place - the art of that intelligence which comes through investigation, through exploration, that art - the very meaning of that word is to put everything where it belongs, put everything in our life where it belongs, and to find out where it belongs you need tremendous intelligence
J. Krishnamurti
Friday, October 13, 2006
U.S. pushes for vote on North Korea sanctions
The United States is circulating a new draft resolution at the United Nations that pushes for non-military sanctions against North Korea. It also includes one of China's demands -- that further action require another UN resolution.
China and Russia have urged the U.S. to take a more measured approach in dealing with North Korea, after the communist state claimed to have successfully carried out a nuclear test.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said that the U.S. is in favour of keeping diplomatic channels open but also wants swift action, not more meetings.
"I think the council should try to respond to a nuclear test within the same week that the test occurred," he said.
Both the U.S. and Japan had originally hoped for a Thursday vote, but if Washington wants to win the approval of China and Russia -- both next-door neighbors to North Korea -- it's unlikely a vote will occur before next week.
The newest draft circulated by the U.S. authorizes sanctions against North Korea under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which normally allows potential military action.
But the proposed resolution would only operate under Article 41, calling for non-military sanctions like banning air travel or economic punishment. It also scraps a blanket arms embargo, although still includes sanctions on specific military equipment like tanks.
China has resisted American efforts to impose sanctions, saying it would be better to keep communication channels with Pyongyang open.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said North Korea should understand it had made a mistake but "punishment should not be the purpose" of any UN action.
The UN's response "should be conducive to the de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula ... and the resumption of the talks," he told reporters Thursday.
"It's necessary to express clearly to North Korea that ... the international community is opposed to this nuclear test."
N. Korea threatens countermeasures
North Korea will consider the U.S. pressure "a declaration of war" and would take unspecified "countermeasures," RI Kong Son, vice spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry, told AP Television News.
A North Korean official also threatened "strong countermeasures" against Japan for new sanctions against the communist regime, a Japanese news agency reported from Pyongyang on Thursday.
The threat comes a day after the Japanese government decided on a package of additional economic sanctions against the impoverished nation -- including a ban on all imports from the country and the docking of North Korean ships in Japanese ports.
"That's about a $150 million in trade this year between the two countries," said Chao, "and it's a big blow to North Korea because their economy is rather small and they rely heavily on trade with Japan."
North Korean produce such as clams and mushrooms earns precious foreign currency on the Japanese market, so a ban could be disastrous for the country.
Ferries also serve as a major conduit of communication between the two countries, which have no diplomatic relations.
North Korean nationals also were prohibited from entering Japan, with limited exceptions, the Japanese Cabinet Office said in a statement.
The sanctions are expected to go into effect after they are approved by Japan's Cabinet Friday.
Japan urges return to talks
Sadaaki Numata, the Japanese ambassador to Canada, said the sanctions are necessary given Japan's proximity to North Korea.
"We feel that their threat to us has been redoubled," Numata told CTV's Canada AM when asked why Japan is taking such strong action ahead of the UN resolution vote.
"And given our proximity to North Korea and given that they do actually have in place missiles which can cover the whole of Japan, we do feel that this is indeed a very grave challenge or threat to us."
Sadaaki said Japan is urging North Korea to return to the six-party talks -- a series of meetings with six participating states including China, South Korea, North Korea, the U.S., Russia and Japan -- aimed at finding a peaceful resolution to the security concerns raised by the North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
"We will continue to urge their return to this diplomatic solution."
But Song Il Ho, North Korea's ambassador in charge of diplomatic normalization talks with Japan, warned that Pyongyang "will take strong countermeasures" against Japanese sanctions, news agency Kyodo quoted him as saying.
"The specific contents will become clear if you keep watching. We never speak empty words," he added.
Song said Pyongyang considered Japan's measures as "more serious in nature" than those of other nations, because Tokyo has yet to adequately atone for its colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
He added that North Korea was closely watching new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office last month and is known for his hardline views on Pyongyang.
The Kyodo report quoted Song as suggesting that Pyongyang would not hold normalization talks with Japan as long as sanctions are in place. Those talks are stalled over issues including the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 80s.
"I wonder if we can hold talks under these kinds of circumstances," Song said.
China and Russia have urged the U.S. to take a more measured approach in dealing with North Korea, after the communist state claimed to have successfully carried out a nuclear test.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said that the U.S. is in favour of keeping diplomatic channels open but also wants swift action, not more meetings.
"I think the council should try to respond to a nuclear test within the same week that the test occurred," he said.
Both the U.S. and Japan had originally hoped for a Thursday vote, but if Washington wants to win the approval of China and Russia -- both next-door neighbors to North Korea -- it's unlikely a vote will occur before next week.
The newest draft circulated by the U.S. authorizes sanctions against North Korea under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which normally allows potential military action.
But the proposed resolution would only operate under Article 41, calling for non-military sanctions like banning air travel or economic punishment. It also scraps a blanket arms embargo, although still includes sanctions on specific military equipment like tanks.
China has resisted American efforts to impose sanctions, saying it would be better to keep communication channels with Pyongyang open.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said North Korea should understand it had made a mistake but "punishment should not be the purpose" of any UN action.
The UN's response "should be conducive to the de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula ... and the resumption of the talks," he told reporters Thursday.
"It's necessary to express clearly to North Korea that ... the international community is opposed to this nuclear test."
N. Korea threatens countermeasures
North Korea will consider the U.S. pressure "a declaration of war" and would take unspecified "countermeasures," RI Kong Son, vice spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry, told AP Television News.
A North Korean official also threatened "strong countermeasures" against Japan for new sanctions against the communist regime, a Japanese news agency reported from Pyongyang on Thursday.
The threat comes a day after the Japanese government decided on a package of additional economic sanctions against the impoverished nation -- including a ban on all imports from the country and the docking of North Korean ships in Japanese ports.
"That's about a $150 million in trade this year between the two countries," said Chao, "and it's a big blow to North Korea because their economy is rather small and they rely heavily on trade with Japan."
North Korean produce such as clams and mushrooms earns precious foreign currency on the Japanese market, so a ban could be disastrous for the country.
Ferries also serve as a major conduit of communication between the two countries, which have no diplomatic relations.
North Korean nationals also were prohibited from entering Japan, with limited exceptions, the Japanese Cabinet Office said in a statement.
The sanctions are expected to go into effect after they are approved by Japan's Cabinet Friday.
Japan urges return to talks
Sadaaki Numata, the Japanese ambassador to Canada, said the sanctions are necessary given Japan's proximity to North Korea.
"We feel that their threat to us has been redoubled," Numata told CTV's Canada AM when asked why Japan is taking such strong action ahead of the UN resolution vote.
"And given our proximity to North Korea and given that they do actually have in place missiles which can cover the whole of Japan, we do feel that this is indeed a very grave challenge or threat to us."
Sadaaki said Japan is urging North Korea to return to the six-party talks -- a series of meetings with six participating states including China, South Korea, North Korea, the U.S., Russia and Japan -- aimed at finding a peaceful resolution to the security concerns raised by the North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
"We will continue to urge their return to this diplomatic solution."
But Song Il Ho, North Korea's ambassador in charge of diplomatic normalization talks with Japan, warned that Pyongyang "will take strong countermeasures" against Japanese sanctions, news agency Kyodo quoted him as saying.
"The specific contents will become clear if you keep watching. We never speak empty words," he added.
Song said Pyongyang considered Japan's measures as "more serious in nature" than those of other nations, because Tokyo has yet to adequately atone for its colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
He added that North Korea was closely watching new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office last month and is known for his hardline views on Pyongyang.
The Kyodo report quoted Song as suggesting that Pyongyang would not hold normalization talks with Japan as long as sanctions are in place. Those talks are stalled over issues including the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 80s.
"I wonder if we can hold talks under these kinds of circumstances," Song said.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Movie Tunes: The Top 40 music moments in film history
There’s nothing better for someone who’s a fan of both music and movies to sit down in a theater, watch a film, and find yourself in awe of how the director has utilized a pop song to set a scene or convey a mood. It’s easy to know that you need a romantic song for a romantic moment, but finding the right song…? That’s the hard bit, and it gets even harder as you have to provide the proper sonic backdrop for just about every key moment in the film. Bullz-Eye polled all of our movie and music writers (and then some) to get their favorite uses of pop songs in movies.
The only real criteria we set was this: The song couldn’t have been written specifically for the film or have made its debut on the film’s soundtrack. This was pretty rough on us at first, because it meant we had to say so long to Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” (“The Breakfast Club”), bid bye-bye to O.M.D.’s “If You Leave” (“Pretty in Pink”), and offer a fond farewell to Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” (“She’s Having a Baby”).
Fortunately, we had a lot of great songs – and movie moments – waiting in the wings. But be advised: our descriptions contain spoilers galore.
Jerry Lee Lewis: The Killer Reloaded
Jerry Lee Lewis, inventor of rock & roll excess, has spent the past decade watching "Gunsmoke" reruns. Now the last Sun Records original re-emerges with a new disc, where he teaches everyone from Keith Richards to Kid Rock how it's done.
As his five Chihuahuas yowl inside the house, Jerry Lee Lewis shuffles out the kitchen door and rummages around the line of doghouses he keeps in his carport for the five gentle mutts who lie around outside in the yard. He is wearing only his underpants - bikini briefs, not boxers - and it appears that the most rock & roll of all rock & rollers might be having a senior moment. "Go back in the house, Daddy!" says Phoebe Lewis, alpha female of his inner circle. Jerry mumbles something unintelligible. Even in Nesbit, Mississippi ("Home of Jerry Lee Lewis: The Killer"), nobody talks quite like him.
He's the Mount Vesuvius of vowels, which erupt deep under the surface and spew pure and unalloyed by consonants into the upper atmosphere. It's like the guy decided in 1957 to enunciate song lyrics and otherwise use his tongue exclusively for swallowing food. "Go back inside," Phoebe says, "and put on your clothes!" "Izza mah hlay, innih? Ah ih wah rou ih mah orz ih ah wah oo," says Jerry, which means: "This is my place, isn't it? I can walk around in my shorts if I want to." "The man here in the driveway is a writer!" says Phoebe.
"Ah o eeha riyer! Ah ellina hroo!" ("I know he's a writer. I'm telling the truth.")"This is the truth? Your underpants are the truth?" Jerry makes a sound that defies both his daughter and phonetic spelling. "Well, go ahead, then!" says Phoebe. "Make a fool out of yourself! See if I care! Go ahead and put on a show for all those cars on the highway, too!"
Jerry glares at his sole living descendant and marches to the middle of the driveway, which goes up a short rise from Malone Road. Over the white fence that surrounds his forty acres and pond, the headlights of the passing cars seem to be gaping at the Killer, who is illuminated by the garage lights as if onstage. Hunched but unbowed, after six decades over the piano, he flaps his arms, he jumps up and down, he screams vowel sounds at the cars, daring them to gaze upon his nakedness in the humid night air.
"Lehm ri ah!" ("Let him write that"), Jerry snarls, stomping back into the house.
So it isn't a senior moment. It is a Jerry Lee Lewis moment, which could have happened pretty much any time since he was born on September 29th, 1935, the same year Elvis Presley arrived in this world of woe. The last of the original Sun Records pioneers of rock & roll, and by far the least likely to be walking around in the twenty-first century, the only guy in all of music who makes Keith Richards look about as dangerous as Jessica Simpson, the Killer continues to rage into the night . . . well, no. Let's say he's resumed raging. The Nineties were a really bad decade for the Killer, and that would be after the public-relations nightmare of the Fifties, the smoking ruin of the Sixties, the unprecedented string of calamities in the Seventies, and then in 1981 his stomach exploded, and it's been all downhill from there. Who could blame a guy for taking a little time off to get depressed?
The Lewis Ranch, as it is called, or Disgraceland, as it is also called, is a racquetball court, two jet planes and a graveyard short of Elvis' former mansion, which is about twenty-five miles away, in Memphis. All the rooms are on one floor, all the rooms are piled high with swag from fifty years in the music business, and large portions of it have been painted gold. Jerry's sixth wife in his seventh marriage, Kerrie Lynn McCarver Lewis, blew through the place like King Midas. Painted the walls, painted the floors, painted the grand piano, painted the cupboards, painted her Cadillac Fleetwood - all of it gold, gold and more gold. Except the kitchen, which she covered with Coca-Cola wallpaper.
"She was a horrible bitch who was possessed by the devil and only shopped at Wal-Mart - we've just now begun stripping the walls," says Phoebe at the kitchen counter in late afternoon. Born to Jerry and his third wife, Myra, in 1963, she grew up tall and blond and has the Lewis vibe in all ways. After singing blues and rock around Memphis for a number of years, she moved back in with her father to help him through an arduous divorce. "Kerrie told me she was leaving him, but I was going to run her ass off anyway," she says. "I was born to take care of my daddy. I never married, don't want to have kids. I'm not going to steal his money or give him drugs"...
As his five Chihuahuas yowl inside the house, Jerry Lee Lewis shuffles out the kitchen door and rummages around the line of doghouses he keeps in his carport for the five gentle mutts who lie around outside in the yard. He is wearing only his underpants - bikini briefs, not boxers - and it appears that the most rock & roll of all rock & rollers might be having a senior moment. "Go back in the house, Daddy!" says Phoebe Lewis, alpha female of his inner circle. Jerry mumbles something unintelligible. Even in Nesbit, Mississippi ("Home of Jerry Lee Lewis: The Killer"), nobody talks quite like him.
He's the Mount Vesuvius of vowels, which erupt deep under the surface and spew pure and unalloyed by consonants into the upper atmosphere. It's like the guy decided in 1957 to enunciate song lyrics and otherwise use his tongue exclusively for swallowing food. "Go back inside," Phoebe says, "and put on your clothes!" "Izza mah hlay, innih? Ah ih wah rou ih mah orz ih ah wah oo," says Jerry, which means: "This is my place, isn't it? I can walk around in my shorts if I want to." "The man here in the driveway is a writer!" says Phoebe.
"Ah o eeha riyer! Ah ellina hroo!" ("I know he's a writer. I'm telling the truth.")"This is the truth? Your underpants are the truth?" Jerry makes a sound that defies both his daughter and phonetic spelling. "Well, go ahead, then!" says Phoebe. "Make a fool out of yourself! See if I care! Go ahead and put on a show for all those cars on the highway, too!"
Jerry glares at his sole living descendant and marches to the middle of the driveway, which goes up a short rise from Malone Road. Over the white fence that surrounds his forty acres and pond, the headlights of the passing cars seem to be gaping at the Killer, who is illuminated by the garage lights as if onstage. Hunched but unbowed, after six decades over the piano, he flaps his arms, he jumps up and down, he screams vowel sounds at the cars, daring them to gaze upon his nakedness in the humid night air.
"Lehm ri ah!" ("Let him write that"), Jerry snarls, stomping back into the house.
So it isn't a senior moment. It is a Jerry Lee Lewis moment, which could have happened pretty much any time since he was born on September 29th, 1935, the same year Elvis Presley arrived in this world of woe. The last of the original Sun Records pioneers of rock & roll, and by far the least likely to be walking around in the twenty-first century, the only guy in all of music who makes Keith Richards look about as dangerous as Jessica Simpson, the Killer continues to rage into the night . . . well, no. Let's say he's resumed raging. The Nineties were a really bad decade for the Killer, and that would be after the public-relations nightmare of the Fifties, the smoking ruin of the Sixties, the unprecedented string of calamities in the Seventies, and then in 1981 his stomach exploded, and it's been all downhill from there. Who could blame a guy for taking a little time off to get depressed?
The Lewis Ranch, as it is called, or Disgraceland, as it is also called, is a racquetball court, two jet planes and a graveyard short of Elvis' former mansion, which is about twenty-five miles away, in Memphis. All the rooms are on one floor, all the rooms are piled high with swag from fifty years in the music business, and large portions of it have been painted gold. Jerry's sixth wife in his seventh marriage, Kerrie Lynn McCarver Lewis, blew through the place like King Midas. Painted the walls, painted the floors, painted the grand piano, painted the cupboards, painted her Cadillac Fleetwood - all of it gold, gold and more gold. Except the kitchen, which she covered with Coca-Cola wallpaper.
"She was a horrible bitch who was possessed by the devil and only shopped at Wal-Mart - we've just now begun stripping the walls," says Phoebe at the kitchen counter in late afternoon. Born to Jerry and his third wife, Myra, in 1963, she grew up tall and blond and has the Lewis vibe in all ways. After singing blues and rock around Memphis for a number of years, she moved back in with her father to help him through an arduous divorce. "Kerrie told me she was leaving him, but I was going to run her ass off anyway," she says. "I was born to take care of my daddy. I never married, don't want to have kids. I'm not going to steal his money or give him drugs"...
Gravely ill woman kills son, is freed, kills husband
SOFIA (Reuters) - A Bulgarian woman who killed her son was released from prison because of terminal cancer. She then went home and killed her husband, police said Tuesday.
The 57-year-old was sentenced to 15 years in jail for killing her 29-year-old son with a garden hoe in April 2005 while he was sleeping.
Last month, authorities judged her to be in the final stages of cancer and let her go home, where she stabbed her husband in the throat with a knife.
"It was established she was in the last stage of cancer, she had it all over her body," said a spokeswoman for the Bourgas regional police.
"They presumed she was feeling bad and she would treat herself and rest. But nothing of the kind. She got aggressive and ... she killed her husband."
The woman, from a village in eastern Bulgaria, has been taken into custody again and is awaiting a new trial.
"She threatened that, if she is released again, she will kill her second son as well," the police spokeswoman said.
"The whole case is like something from the twilight zone."
Google brings Sony BMG, WMG music videos to Google Video
Google Video will now offer free music video content from Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group (WMG).
Google, an internet search engine, has entered into a strategic business relationship with the two music companies, making music videos and other content available on its Google Video website.
The content will be paid for by advertisements through Google's AdSense network of hundreds of thousands of advertisers. The advertising revenue generated will be shared by the music companies and Google.
Besides providing ad-supported content on Google Video, select WMG music videos will be available for purchase as downloads on Google Video for $1.99.
Google, an internet search engine, has entered into a strategic business relationship with the two music companies, making music videos and other content available on its Google Video website.
The content will be paid for by advertisements through Google's AdSense network of hundreds of thousands of advertisers. The advertising revenue generated will be shared by the music companies and Google.
Besides providing ad-supported content on Google Video, select WMG music videos will be available for purchase as downloads on Google Video for $1.99.
Friday, October 06, 2006
THE NUMBERS GAME
David Nicholson-Lord explains why trying to discuss human population growth these days is like placing your head on a stand at a coconut shy
Not long ago I spent some time on the Indian subcontinent and one of myabiding memories is of travelling from the far-flung Nepali town of Jumla, home tosome of the thinnest people on the planet, to the airport lounge at Delhi, where the bulk of
passengers were Westerners, notably Americans, and where the human race seemed to have undergone a vast distension in size – an entire evolutionary cycle in the blink of an eye.
At the time it struck me as a metaphor for the economic relationship between North and South – one part of the planet growing fat on the food shortages of the other – but I have since realised it’s a metaphor with many interpretations.
For the first time in history, it was reported this summer, there are now more overweight people in the world (more than a billion) than malnourished (around 800 million). But there are also many more people, fat and thin alike.
Back in August, the Office of National Statistics disclosed that the UK had broken through the 60 million population barrier (in 2005), while the US was due to reach 300 million by October 2006.
Both are markers of a process that sees over 70 million people being added to the
global population each year, with growth forecast at 40 per cent by 2050, taking us from 6.5 to 9.1 billion – another 2.6 billion people.
But will they be fat people or thin people and does it matter? I think it does.
Trying to discuss human population growth these days is not unlike placing your head on a stand at a coconut shy. The Right will accuse you of authoritarianism and permissiveness, the Left of being racist, fascistic or neo-Malthusian.
The recent upsurge in migration as a key factor in population growth in developed countries has added a further inflammatory ingredient. To
their eternal discredit, environmental groups, fearful of such a witches’ brew, have fled the field, camouflaging their retreat in a blizzard of rationalisations. Yet according to the head of one leading environmental organisation, population is the subject that attracts the most questions at meetings round the country.
In fact, if you’re looking for issues that best demonstrate the chasm between what ordinary people think – not least because they experience its realities daily – and what civil society leaders deem it politic to mention in public, population would
undoubtedly come high up the list.
What explains this? One much-cited factor is political correctness (PC), a phrase
the Right loves, the Left hates and most neutrals acknowledge exists but have trouble defining. In this case, PC may be shorthand for the deliberate substitution of one agenda – reproductive health – for another, more overtly concerned with human numbers.
This gathered impetus after the Cairo population conference in 1994 and one result has been the systematic exclusion of the numbers dimension from permissible civil society discourse – and, to a degree, the ostracising and blackballing of its proponents.
One of the most vivid expressions of this was the decision by the long-established
NGO Population Concern to rebrand itself Interact Worldwide in 2003 – a move which the group saw as its only means of survival but which would have no doubt fascinated 1984 author George Orwell, deviser of Newspeak.
There was a rationale to this, of course.
Concern with numbers had become (wrongly) associated with a coercive approach – chiefly Mrs Gandhi’s sterilisation polices in India and China’s (continuing) one-child policy. Too much attention had focused on developing
countries as the chief locus of population growth – the ‘teeming millions’ thesis. More significantly, environmentalists in particular had absorbed the message that numbers are not the only factor: how you live is also important.
In terms of global environmental impact, one fat person – metaphorically speaking – can do as much damage as many thin ones.
Over the past decade or so, the rapidly developing methodology of ecological
footprinting has helped elaborate such calculations. The latest Living Planet report, for example, tells us not only that in 2001 humanity as a whole overshot the Earth’s annual biological capacity by 20 per cent but that one American has 12 times the overall global impact of one Indian. So, although India, with 1.1 billion people, is conventionally thought of as being ‘overpopulated’ while
the US, with 300 million, is not, the reality is very different. On a like-for-like comparison with India, for example, the US population is 12 times 300 million – or 3.6 billion. In other words, the US as a whole does three times more global environmental damage than India as a whole. Do the sums for the two countries’
per capita greenhouse gas emissions – and therefore impact on the earth’s atmosphere alone, as opposed to the entirety of the global ecosystem – and the results are even more extreme, since an American emits roughly 20 times more carbon than an Indian.
Environmental groups have grasped this approach but have chosen to interpret it as meaning that numbers no longer matter – that greening our lifestyles and our technologies is the key. For some, this approach is no doubt genuine – in the sense in which Thomas Kuhn talked about paradigm shifts, they no longer ‘see’ the population growth lurking behind virtually every aspect of environmental crisis.
For others, I suspect, it is a kind of wilful blindness, born of realpolitik plus a desire not to alienate members, upset fellow progressives and get their heads knocked off the coconut stand.
But the verdict of green historians will surely be that it’s a betrayal of future
generations. How can groups such as Friends of the Earth and the Campaign to Protect Rural England work to defend green space from development and not recognise the crucial importance of human numbers – the numbers of those wanting housing, offices, shops, schools, leisure facilities?
The truth is that greener lifestyles can make a difference but that zero-impact living, for the foreseeable future, is a chimera and that human numbers do matter – hugely. Footprinting studies by Andrew Ferguson at the Optimum Population
Trust suggest that if a world of six billion lived
Not long ago I spent some time on the Indian subcontinent and one of myabiding memories is of travelling from the far-flung Nepali town of Jumla, home tosome of the thinnest people on the planet, to the airport lounge at Delhi, where the bulk of
passengers were Westerners, notably Americans, and where the human race seemed to have undergone a vast distension in size – an entire evolutionary cycle in the blink of an eye.
At the time it struck me as a metaphor for the economic relationship between North and South – one part of the planet growing fat on the food shortages of the other – but I have since realised it’s a metaphor with many interpretations.
For the first time in history, it was reported this summer, there are now more overweight people in the world (more than a billion) than malnourished (around 800 million). But there are also many more people, fat and thin alike.
Back in August, the Office of National Statistics disclosed that the UK had broken through the 60 million population barrier (in 2005), while the US was due to reach 300 million by October 2006.
Both are markers of a process that sees over 70 million people being added to the
global population each year, with growth forecast at 40 per cent by 2050, taking us from 6.5 to 9.1 billion – another 2.6 billion people.
But will they be fat people or thin people and does it matter? I think it does.
Trying to discuss human population growth these days is not unlike placing your head on a stand at a coconut shy. The Right will accuse you of authoritarianism and permissiveness, the Left of being racist, fascistic or neo-Malthusian.
The recent upsurge in migration as a key factor in population growth in developed countries has added a further inflammatory ingredient. To
their eternal discredit, environmental groups, fearful of such a witches’ brew, have fled the field, camouflaging their retreat in a blizzard of rationalisations. Yet according to the head of one leading environmental organisation, population is the subject that attracts the most questions at meetings round the country.
In fact, if you’re looking for issues that best demonstrate the chasm between what ordinary people think – not least because they experience its realities daily – and what civil society leaders deem it politic to mention in public, population would
undoubtedly come high up the list.
What explains this? One much-cited factor is political correctness (PC), a phrase
the Right loves, the Left hates and most neutrals acknowledge exists but have trouble defining. In this case, PC may be shorthand for the deliberate substitution of one agenda – reproductive health – for another, more overtly concerned with human numbers.
This gathered impetus after the Cairo population conference in 1994 and one result has been the systematic exclusion of the numbers dimension from permissible civil society discourse – and, to a degree, the ostracising and blackballing of its proponents.
One of the most vivid expressions of this was the decision by the long-established
NGO Population Concern to rebrand itself Interact Worldwide in 2003 – a move which the group saw as its only means of survival but which would have no doubt fascinated 1984 author George Orwell, deviser of Newspeak.
There was a rationale to this, of course.
Concern with numbers had become (wrongly) associated with a coercive approach – chiefly Mrs Gandhi’s sterilisation polices in India and China’s (continuing) one-child policy. Too much attention had focused on developing
countries as the chief locus of population growth – the ‘teeming millions’ thesis. More significantly, environmentalists in particular had absorbed the message that numbers are not the only factor: how you live is also important.
In terms of global environmental impact, one fat person – metaphorically speaking – can do as much damage as many thin ones.
Over the past decade or so, the rapidly developing methodology of ecological
footprinting has helped elaborate such calculations. The latest Living Planet report, for example, tells us not only that in 2001 humanity as a whole overshot the Earth’s annual biological capacity by 20 per cent but that one American has 12 times the overall global impact of one Indian. So, although India, with 1.1 billion people, is conventionally thought of as being ‘overpopulated’ while
the US, with 300 million, is not, the reality is very different. On a like-for-like comparison with India, for example, the US population is 12 times 300 million – or 3.6 billion. In other words, the US as a whole does three times more global environmental damage than India as a whole. Do the sums for the two countries’
per capita greenhouse gas emissions – and therefore impact on the earth’s atmosphere alone, as opposed to the entirety of the global ecosystem – and the results are even more extreme, since an American emits roughly 20 times more carbon than an Indian.
Environmental groups have grasped this approach but have chosen to interpret it as meaning that numbers no longer matter – that greening our lifestyles and our technologies is the key. For some, this approach is no doubt genuine – in the sense in which Thomas Kuhn talked about paradigm shifts, they no longer ‘see’ the population growth lurking behind virtually every aspect of environmental crisis.
For others, I suspect, it is a kind of wilful blindness, born of realpolitik plus a desire not to alienate members, upset fellow progressives and get their heads knocked off the coconut stand.
But the verdict of green historians will surely be that it’s a betrayal of future
generations. How can groups such as Friends of the Earth and the Campaign to Protect Rural England work to defend green space from development and not recognise the crucial importance of human numbers – the numbers of those wanting housing, offices, shops, schools, leisure facilities?
The truth is that greener lifestyles can make a difference but that zero-impact living, for the foreseeable future, is a chimera and that human numbers do matter – hugely. Footprinting studies by Andrew Ferguson at the Optimum Population
Trust suggest that if a world of six billion lived
TANGO AND ITS SENSUAL ATTRACTION
Tango holds a privileged place in the city’s cultural agenda of events, considering the attractions it is for international tourists.
The fact that the winners of the 2006 IVth Tango Dancing World Championship were Colombians was proof of that. Because of the aforementioned championship, the Tourism’s Sub secretary of the Buenos Aires Ministry of Production carried out a survey, which determined that 23% of the participants were foreign tourists, of which 40.2% traveled solely to attend the event and in some cases, they do it exclusively to learn how to dance Tango.
Therefore, Tango is the motive that attracts foreign tourists, who during their staying will be obliged to look for accommodation and take advantage of the opportunity to go on various excursions, all of which will affect the increment of the tourist services that will benefit the city economically and cognitively.
Thus, as a cultural expression Tango is the city’s best ally, both to advertise the city and as the best product to export.
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