A Reflection

Nearing the conclusion of this project, I feel more fortunate to be alive today in this country more than ever. After all this time I really thought it was a huge drag to haul myself to school every morning. Now I realize that children in other countries would do anything for a mere chance of education. Knowing that the United Nations are putting every ounce of effort they can into making the world better eases me. I thought people were joking when they said corporations are corrupted and those little political cartoons I'd read in social class were exaggerated to an extent. It frightens me to think that some T-shirts hanging in the dark corner of my closet were once in sweatshop factories sewn by children for such a crappy pay.

It's only four more years until 2015 comes. All this strife and chaos in the world makes me feel that we need more time to accomplish these goals. Poverty is only one of the major issues. Another goal is environment sustainability, and I honestly think that this goal is impossible. Capitalism requires infinite growth which needs infinite resources, unfortunately we only have a finite amount of resources. We've only hit the industrial age like a century ago and all this chaotic destruction is making me wonder if our little blue planet is going to last another century. Actually, on second thought I take that back, our planet is going to last forever. Humans on the other hand, yeah us, were in deep trouble. Our planet has been through tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, ice ages, reversal of the magnetic poles and a bunch of other crap and we think a bunch of plastic bags in landfills is going affect our planet? Simply put, the planet is fine my dear reader, but the humans are screwed.

Recognize this guy from Ice Age 2?

Go here: http://www.worldometers.info/ take a good look.

 I didn't know a page full of numbers could amuse me for so long. Watching some of those numbers rise made me go holy crap, especially the cigarettes. Didn't know people liked to smoke that much.

Knowing all of this makes me think what can a mere sixteen year old boy do to prevent the catastrophic, inevitable end of the human race. Well despite all the research I've done on the current events of today, I honestly have no idea.  I mean come on, I'm only sixteen. However, today I choose to live in a more dignified way. I won't be so wasteful and inconsiderate of my surroundings. Now I'll live the rest of my life knowing the dark side of corporations like Wal-Mart..

                I read a book called: Opposing Viewpoints: Homelessness. Basically the Opposing Viewpoints series is written by a collection of viewpoints written by different authors. All the chapters contradict each other, for instance one chapter in the book was Society is tired of helping the homeless, while another chapter might be Society is helping the homeless. This book is an incredibly wealthy with information. I read this book because another sub goal for the eradication of poverty is:  Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all including women and young people. One memorable quote I found was:

“There have been trillions spent on murderous weapons and the military industrial complexes”

“Money for housing? The word is No. National health plan? Uh-uh. Social investment, public enterprise, child care, support for the elderly, research and development, progressive taxation, antitrust enforcement, environmental action, job security reindustrialization, economic justice- a thousand times No.”

Take a look at the little left widget on the right of my blog where it says "Cost of War to the United States."

Compare it to this which was taken approximately one year ago in December. Is putting in all that money really worth it? Could we possibly invest the trillions of dollars into something else like gee I don't know, healthcare?

This pie graph represents the distribution of taxpayer money in America into several categories according to 2008 statistics. It's ridiculous how much money is being spent on weapons of mass destruction.

Consider the following examples:

The cost of one these is a hefty $1.1 billion dollars. Approximately 52 of these have been built

The cost of one ship is enough to build 8 brand new hospitals.

One of these bad boys cost $737 million dollars.

The cost of one of these can build 86 brand new schools.

Michael Moore is a filmmaker and author in America. In this video, he challenges Phil Knight, the co founder of Nike shoes to raise the minimum working age of footwear factories in Indonesia to eighteen. The most dominant message in this video is the adverse effect of child labor in third world countries. Now child labor doesn't only occur in Indonesia; it also takes place in my homeland Vietnam, China and other south eastern Asian countries. It is also not only limited to shoes, but other Nike products such as various sportswear and equipment.

Now why would big corporations take the time and effort to fly to another country and set up factories there when they can simply make factories over here? The answer is simple. Cheap labor. Why pay a worker 10 dollars an hour to make shoes when you can outsource the job and pay someone else 10 cents an hour? Nike isn't the only guilty corporation here. Consider Wal-Mart as an example. Why does Wal-Mart advertise cheap prices all the time? It is all thanks to child labor because the production, manufacturing and exportation of goods is dirt cheap. Many corporations look to China as a gateway of wealth because of the large massive workforce available. More workers means more jobs and faster production of goods, and services.

"Made in China." We see it often but many don't realize the true significance it holds. China is the largest exporter. It's a good chance that most of your things in your living room, the clothes and shoes your wearing were made in China. Corporations outsource jobs to China so our prices can remain low. To do this: workers are subject to extreme exploitation, absence of living wage benefits, poor working conditions and even verbal and physical abuse. Sweatshop workers are paid less than their daily expenses, and therefore are never able to save any money to improve their livelihood. They are trapped in an awful cycle of exploitation and abuse.

Here's a short Simpson's opening introduction. The artists representation of sweatshops was powerful

Ever thought that you could determine how prosperous a country is by looking at it during the night? There are at least 1.5billion people currently in the world who do not have access to electricity. People in these countries still rely on wood and charcoal for basic cooking and lighting. The only way they could get more access to light and energy is if they leave to another place. Speaking of electricity, did you know that only 2 billion people have access to the internet? That’s almost a third of our world’s population!

We should really consider how lucky we are to live in such a prosperous place.


Take a look at this video. Watch it in high definition to have a real blast. The International Space Station makes a flyby over the world at night. The thin green line surrounding our earth is actually our atmosphere. We can even see the stars in our skies. Take a good look at North America, look at how bright our cities look like at night. Now look at Japan and Europe. The same thing is evident. Lights, lights and more lights. The second map shows the first world countries (blue) second world countries (red) and third world countries (green). Notice any similarities to the first map? That's the point I'm trying to make.

                Now how on earth does this tie into poverty? Well in order for a country to be economically powerful, obviously money has to be present.  One of the sub goals for poverty is : halve the proportion of people who live on less than $1.25 a day. It's startling to know that over three billion people in the world live in such extreme conditions.

Last but not least, some other things to keep in mind:

8 million people die yearly due to hunger.

Thirty thousand children die daily due to poverty and easily curable diseases.

6 million children die annually before their fifth birthday due to starvation.

MDGs are a set of objectives that are believed to be achieved in 2015. They bestow a little more hope into the planet and are currently run under the conglomerate of government agendas. Although we haven't achieved all of the goals, a substantial amount of the world has been improved over the past few years. Will there ever be freedom from strife that rises from chaos? Will the malevolent and strong stop exploiting the brittle and weak to gratify their lust for power? Those are the questions I ponder when I merely scratch the surface of the problem. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." A quote from Ghandi. If countries keep fighting, if revenge is justified, there can only be more hate. The liberty we experience today was wrought under the mad annihilation of others. After knowing this, I ask myself again, what role do I play?

I decided to take a look at a video to see what's up in our society. 173 million people in 2009 stood up for the millennium development goals. People are fighting against poverty, but also the false promises that our governments make in an effort to hide the reality of the issues. 101 million people in Asia are making a big noise for our leaders. 38 million people in Africa stood up to be counted as people who are dedicated to ensure poverty ends. 31 million people in the countries of Lebanon, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Dubai and Palestine are part of the greatest movement in history towards MDGs. 192,000 people in North America are also helping. I was surprised at this number because I expected a lot more people. Maybe I'm part of a nation that doesn't care much.

Blog Revival

I honestly never thought that this blog would ever see the light of day again. Anyways, I'll head straight to the point. I envision a future where we have successfully eradicated poverty. In order to do that however, is easier said than done. The United Nations have created the eight millenium development goals and they are essentially goals that are meant to be accomplished by 2015. All of the goals can be found here: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

I've done a little digging on our progress for the first millenium development goal; my main focus for my ideal future. Currently in several third world countries, the proportion of people who are living on less than a dollar a day is alarming. The first sub goal of eradicate poverty is to halve this humongous proportion of people. This graph may explain things a lot clearer.

The goals are meant to be accomplished by 2015, however based on the graph, we still have a long way to go and 5 years from now may not be enough. In Eastern Asia and South Eastern Asia, the goals have been already accomplished. However the conditions in CIS, Asia have grown worse. 

Thursday Morning

Just decided to blog after I finished my Religion unit exam. I didn't do a bad job. Today is the day we have a conference in the afternoon. Mr.Alger suggests that we should actually think today. Were going to be finishing Othello and Blood Diamond today. I think I would have done a lot better if we watched the movie first and than read the novel after. At least I'll understand what is going on, but that is just my opinion. Today is going to be one of those days, this morning we are going to be watching movies, and in the afternoon we have the UN conference.

3 hours later

-------------

Finally, we finished a long day, I now have the math formal due, out of all the days. Unfortunately for other people, the gala is today will last until night, and that provides little time for them to do any work, but fortunately tomorrow morning, we are in the computer lab all morning to do any sort of work we need to do. The UN conference was cool, until the students from Texas started dissing Canadian culture with sterotypical jokes, but it was just friendly. So we said "How's the death penalty over there?" and then they disconnected. Turns out we were like a couple minutes late for the continuation of the UN conference.

At the end of the long tiring day, I threw out like virtually nothing, went to the bathroom minimal times, and barely ate dinner. I guess that's what happens when you work like a college student. Save the environment today, easily, by sitting infront of the computer doing homework the whole day! So at the end of the conference we did pledges, little things, or big, to create an impact on the world. I decided to turn off all the lights in the houses, except for the lamp infront of my computer that I use everyday to work.