BRUSSELS, Oct 17 (KUNA) -- The European Union (EU) is one of the richest regions in the world, yet over 84 million people are still threatened by poverty, EU Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs Laszlo Andor said here in a statement today to mark the International day for the Eradication of Poverty.
The decision to lift at least 20 million people out of poverty by 2020 sends a powerful message that the EU takes social inclusion very seriously, he added.
The 27-member European bloc has a population of over 500 million people.
"The International Day for Eradication of Poverty is a day when the whole world is reminded that there are people who suffer from poverty and we need to act together to make a difference," he added.
On his part, EU Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs declared that radicating poverty is also a global challenge. "Today, 1.4 billion people in the developing world are still denied the chance to build a future by living in extreme poverty. In September, global leaders gave a new impetus to the fight against poverty and committed to make the Millennium Development Goals a success by 2015," he noted.
The UN summit on MDGs in September adopted a global action plan to achieve the anti-poverty goals by 2015. (end)
nk.mt KUNA 171332 Oct 10NNNN
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Sunday, October 17, 2010
Southern Russia floods leave 11 dead
Updated: 08:21, Sunday October 17, 2010
Floods in southern Russia have killed 11 people, and three are missing, authorities say.
Two days of heavy rain in the Krasnodar region caused a mountain river to burst its banks, sending torrents of water down the mountains onto villages.
Local Emergency Ministry spokesman Roman Kravchenko said three of the 11 killed were elderly people trapped in their houses. Two more were found dead in a sewer hole.
About 160 people were evacuated from their homes on Friday, but as the rain stopped on Saturday they headed back home to take stock of the damage, the spokesman said.
Authorities say heavy rain also caused mudslides in the mountains, blocking several sections of the North Caucasian railway.
Source Article
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Floods in southern Russia have killed 11 people, and three are missing, authorities say.
Two days of heavy rain in the Krasnodar region caused a mountain river to burst its banks, sending torrents of water down the mountains onto villages.
Local Emergency Ministry spokesman Roman Kravchenko said three of the 11 killed were elderly people trapped in their houses. Two more were found dead in a sewer hole.
About 160 people were evacuated from their homes on Friday, but as the rain stopped on Saturday they headed back home to take stock of the damage, the spokesman said.
Authorities say heavy rain also caused mudslides in the mountains, blocking several sections of the North Caucasian railway.
Source Article
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The Rot Within: Our Culture of Financial Fraud and the Anger of the Honest (October 15, 2010)
Misrepresentation, fraud and gaming the system are all heavily incentivized in the U.S. culture and economy, and honesty is punished. This truth is finally being revealed on a grand scale. The coming implosion of the U.S. economy has been richly earned. Today I am publishing a commentary by an accountant with decades of experience in high-level global consulting firms and Fortune 50 U.S. corporations. What he has observed is unknown to the vast majority of Americans.
I have documented the poisoning of the nation's culture and economy by a "game the system"/exploitation mentality:
The Coming Collapse of the Real Estate Market
Runaway Feedback Loops, Wealth Concentration and Gaming-The-System
Imagining A Middle Class Does Not Create One
With accountability effectively lost, cheating, lying, misrepresention, embezzlement and fraud, both petty and monumental, have all been incentivized. Thus the "little people" game the welfare/entitlement system and the Financial Elites game the mortgage market, and everyone gamed whatever piece of the housing bubble they could grab.
Where does that leave the honest citizenry? At an extreme disadvantage. Lying, sins of omission, misrepresentation and doing the bidding of evil organizations gets you bonuses and career advancement, while refusing to game the system as instructed gets your fired.
How does that make honest people feel? How about righteously angry?
I'd like to provide some context for this commentary from the Survival+ critique. Here is how I would summarize an integrated understanding of our plight:
1. Humans are selected to seek windfalls and exploit them. I call this windfall exploitation. It is neither good nor bad, it is simply a profoundly advantageous strategy in a hunter-gatherer-wanderer environment.
Individuals can maximize their gain by exploiting windfalls alone, but some windfalls are better exploited by groups. This is the basis of cooperation, which is expressed in both capitalist and socialist systems.
2. The natural resources windfalls have all been exploited. In general, the natural resources are in depletion and there is active competition for them which reduces the windfall.
3. Neoliberal Capitalism developed a solution for this paucity of natural windfalls: the partnership of the Financial Elites and the Central State. The Central State gathered powers of taxation and control which enable it to "enforce" the collection of the national income which can be channeled to its cronies in wealthy (and hence politically powerful) cartels.
The investment banking/mortgage banking industries are the example of this dynamic par excellence. (Please see The Coming Collapse of the Real Estate Market for more.)
4. The last significant windfall available to advanced global Capitalism was the financialization of the global economy. In the U.S., we see this clearly in the financial share of corporate profits; from a pittance in the "real growth" decades of the 1950s and 60s, finance-derived profits came to dominate Corporate America's profits.
5. This financialization effected a net transfer of public and private income streams and wealth from the citizenry and State to the coffers of the financial Elites. As actual productivity and wealth-creation declined, so did wages and incomes when priced in purchasing power.
To offset that decline, people, companies and governments replaced income with debt: they borrowed to fill the gap between their desires/commitments/spending and their net income.
The financial Elites were happy to supply the debt and capture the income streams of servicing that debt. By securitizing those debts and writing derivatives against them, the Elites created a stupendously profitable windfall to exploit. The Central State and its central bank were happy to comply, as they are in partnership with the Elites which enrich and empower them.
6. The net result of this expansion of credit is asset bubbles. When the asset bubbles pop, the debts remain, impoverishing the over-indebted holders of the busted assets.
7. Unfortunately for the Financial Elites, this destruction of assets and debt feeds runaway feedback loops which threaten the entire foundation of their wealth and control.
8. The strategy of both the Financial Elites and the Central State (its willing partner in exploitation of the citizenry) is to conjure up simulacra to replace the truth, which is fatally dangerous to the status quo that is now completely dependent on maintaining a culture of financial untruths.
The order of the day is thus necessarily propaganda, bogus balance sheets, toothless facsimiles of "reform" presented as "real reform," and endless frauds, embezzlements, lies, misrepresentations, omissions, etc., all of which have come to full flower in the credit-housing bubble/mortgage-forclosure debacle.
This is why the Financial Power Elites and the Federal Government are both wedded to lies, half-truths, misrepresentation, omissions, fraud, corruption and the full panoply of propaganda. To tell the truth is to bring down the entire status quo.
Here is our accountant's commentary:
If you would like to post a comment where others can read it, please go to DailyJava.net, (registering only takes a moment), select Of Two Minds-Charles Smith, and then go to The daily topic. To see other readers recent comments, go to New Posts.
BACK to margotbworldnews.com
I have documented the poisoning of the nation's culture and economy by a "game the system"/exploitation mentality:
The Coming Collapse of the Real Estate Market
Runaway Feedback Loops, Wealth Concentration and Gaming-The-System
Imagining A Middle Class Does Not Create One
With accountability effectively lost, cheating, lying, misrepresention, embezzlement and fraud, both petty and monumental, have all been incentivized. Thus the "little people" game the welfare/entitlement system and the Financial Elites game the mortgage market, and everyone gamed whatever piece of the housing bubble they could grab.
Where does that leave the honest citizenry? At an extreme disadvantage. Lying, sins of omission, misrepresentation and doing the bidding of evil organizations gets you bonuses and career advancement, while refusing to game the system as instructed gets your fired.
How does that make honest people feel? How about righteously angry?
I'd like to provide some context for this commentary from the Survival+ critique. Here is how I would summarize an integrated understanding of our plight:
1. Humans are selected to seek windfalls and exploit them. I call this windfall exploitation. It is neither good nor bad, it is simply a profoundly advantageous strategy in a hunter-gatherer-wanderer environment.
Individuals can maximize their gain by exploiting windfalls alone, but some windfalls are better exploited by groups. This is the basis of cooperation, which is expressed in both capitalist and socialist systems.
2. The natural resources windfalls have all been exploited. In general, the natural resources are in depletion and there is active competition for them which reduces the windfall.
3. Neoliberal Capitalism developed a solution for this paucity of natural windfalls: the partnership of the Financial Elites and the Central State. The Central State gathered powers of taxation and control which enable it to "enforce" the collection of the national income which can be channeled to its cronies in wealthy (and hence politically powerful) cartels.
The investment banking/mortgage banking industries are the example of this dynamic par excellence. (Please see The Coming Collapse of the Real Estate Market for more.)
4. The last significant windfall available to advanced global Capitalism was the financialization of the global economy. In the U.S., we see this clearly in the financial share of corporate profits; from a pittance in the "real growth" decades of the 1950s and 60s, finance-derived profits came to dominate Corporate America's profits.
5. This financialization effected a net transfer of public and private income streams and wealth from the citizenry and State to the coffers of the financial Elites. As actual productivity and wealth-creation declined, so did wages and incomes when priced in purchasing power.
To offset that decline, people, companies and governments replaced income with debt: they borrowed to fill the gap between their desires/commitments/spending and their net income.
The financial Elites were happy to supply the debt and capture the income streams of servicing that debt. By securitizing those debts and writing derivatives against them, the Elites created a stupendously profitable windfall to exploit. The Central State and its central bank were happy to comply, as they are in partnership with the Elites which enrich and empower them.
6. The net result of this expansion of credit is asset bubbles. When the asset bubbles pop, the debts remain, impoverishing the over-indebted holders of the busted assets.
7. Unfortunately for the Financial Elites, this destruction of assets and debt feeds runaway feedback loops which threaten the entire foundation of their wealth and control.
8. The strategy of both the Financial Elites and the Central State (its willing partner in exploitation of the citizenry) is to conjure up simulacra to replace the truth, which is fatally dangerous to the status quo that is now completely dependent on maintaining a culture of financial untruths.
The order of the day is thus necessarily propaganda, bogus balance sheets, toothless facsimiles of "reform" presented as "real reform," and endless frauds, embezzlements, lies, misrepresentations, omissions, etc., all of which have come to full flower in the credit-housing bubble/mortgage-forclosure debacle.
This is why the Financial Power Elites and the Federal Government are both wedded to lies, half-truths, misrepresentation, omissions, fraud, corruption and the full panoply of propaganda. To tell the truth is to bring down the entire status quo.
Here is our accountant's commentary:
I belong to a large number of finance organizations and sometimes I even assist clients with hiring a finance person. Since I have a lot of experience with finance and accounting, when I am interviewing these people I know when I am getting a BS answer and unlike most BS recruiters I do not steer away from controversy since I am truly looking for the most qualified for my clients and not who is just most marketable to them. After I start drilling down you would be amazed (or maybe you wouldn’t) how many of these CFO’s and Controller types were basically dismissed because they would not cook the books in some manner. Now maybe I have told you that I was asked to resign from one of the nations largest companies (a company that I worked hard for and saved from bankruptcy and due to my actions had created) in the US because I refused to book a revenue entry for over a million dollars which was unsupported and the CFO (I had been the CFO up until a merger) blew up with me when I asked him to send a memo telling me to record it. Funny, a few years and one acquisition later it melted down as one of the biggest accounting frauds in US history.The anger of the honest will soon know no bounds, and the guilt of the complicit will settle like a silent pall over the nation: guilty as charged. Who will raise their hands to plead the guilt we all see and know?
My next gig as the CFO for a NYSE company I basically walked in and found what I would consider a $60 million dollar accounting fraud in one day (once again a mark to market issue draining cash flow and sucking the company into a dark hole). Corrected that accounting problem and the company began to prosper but since I thought the board and upper management was so corrupt I left (Chairman of the Audit Committee was found guilty at another large company for back dating options).
The next public company where not only was I the CFO but prior to that a board member, I was basically asked to resign for BS reasons a couple of weeks later after I pointed out what the board was asking me to do was basically wire fraud and of course they backed off quickly and said they would get a legal opinion from our law firm (one of the top 10 in the US) to cover me. In the same meeting our outside legal counsel said he had a problem giving such an opinion and I pointed out that a legal opinion did not keep me from being both civil and criminally liable. It should be noted that this was another company that 2 years before I came in and took the reins as CFO/COO and pulled the company out of black hole of looming bankruptcy and made it profitable in the first time in its history since it went public and then refinanced the company. In summary a year after I left the company had burned through the money I raised and the Board sold the company for nothing.
There is lots of bitterness out there with the straight shooting finance people. Many of them find themselves unemployable. This stretches from banks, Private Equity, Investment Banking, through the large accounting firms (the average partner in the large accounting firms any more is a pathological liar) to senior finance people in organizations. Right before Enron and MCI blew-up, I actually had a BS HR person tell me I was not flexible enough. I wanted to tell this idiot that I knew where flexibility got me and it was an orange jumpsuit. Bankers and Companies only hire the weakest and most pliable senior finance executives they can find.
One other short story. A while back I was at a networking meeting with a large group of CFO and ex-CFO’s. I asked this group how many thought that most CEO’s wanted a weak CFO working for them. Approximately 70% of the attendees raised their hand! You have to remember that the only person who had steady access to the Board is the CFO.
The point, the middle class is becoming torn and frayed and there is real anger out there. The common belief is that only the liars and thieves are moving ahead in this country.
If you would like to post a comment where others can read it, please go to DailyJava.net, (registering only takes a moment), select Of Two Minds-Charles Smith, and then go to The daily topic. To see other readers recent comments, go to New Posts.
BACK to margotbworldnews.com
Why I'm an optimist about changing the world
What nonprofits can learn from Coke
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Melinda Gates: The UN adopted Millennium Development Goals 10 years ago
- She says there's been extraordinary progress in many areas
- Reduction in child mortality alone will save 4 million lives in 2010, compared to 1990, she says
- Gates: I'm optimistic about the world but impatient for faster change
Editor's note: Melinda French Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to "Ideas worth spreading," which it makes available through talks posted on its website.
(CNN) -- At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we consider ourselves to be impatient optimists -- we are impatient with the way the world is, but optimistic that changing it is possible.One reason for this optimism is the progress that we have seen in the 10 years since the United Nations created the Millennium Development Goals, eight international goals to improve social and economic conditions in the world's poorest countries.
Recently, we partnered with TED to create a global event to discuss this progress. TEDxChange was hosted in New York and broadcast live to over 80 simultaneous TEDx events in 40 countries around the world, including sites in Kibera, Kenya; Abuja, Nigeria; Pune, India; Cochabamba, Bolivia; and Lahore, Pakistan.
The millennium goals themselves embody impatient optimism. They recognize how much there is to be done, while at the same time signaling the scale and scope of the world's ambition.
The world is not called on to conjure progress from a void. Instead, it is called on to learn from very real progress on nearly all the goals, to expand it, and to speed it up.
One refrain I hear is that we are off track on many of the goals. That statement is technically accurate. Not every country will meet every goal, and there is a risk that some of the global goals won't be met. But that binary outlook -- with total success on one side, total failure on the other, and people on all sides blaming each other -- obscures extraordinary progress driven by extraordinary people across the globe.
Take the goal for child mortality. The goal is a two-thirds reduction, and we may not reach it by 2015. But have we failed when 4 million children who would have died in 1990 will survive in 2010? Have we failed when we have reduced polio, a crippling childhood disease, by 99 percent in the past 20 years?
Another complaint I hear a lot is that progress isn't spread evenly. Some people dismiss the fact that 1.3 billion people have lifted themselves out of poverty by pointing out that most of them live in China and India, not in African countries.
I believe that when poor people lift themselves out of poverty, we ought to celebrate, no matter where they happen to live. Bill and I started our foundation because we believe that all lives have equal value, and I am not comfortable comparing one person's suffering to that of another.
While it's true that some countries are reducing poverty more quickly than others -- and some, sadly, have moved backwards -- eight African countries have already achieved the goal on poverty reduction, and several more are on schedule to do so by 2015. Across nearly every goal, there are inspiring examples of even the poorest countries making dramatic improvements in short periods of time.
However, we can also learn from the successes in other sectors. My TEDxChange talk focuses on the question of how Coca-Cola has become so ubiquitous around the world and what governments and the development community can learn from the company's success. By analyzing what Coca-Cola has done to become so prevalent, we can apply those lessons to the millennium goals and save even more lives.
The task ahead is to learn what's working so that we can spread best practices. In difficult economic times, it is imperative that we increase support for effective interventions that provide maximum value for money -- and not shift even bigger burdens to the poorest by cutting back on development spending.
So I am impatient. I am impatient because the world is not getting better fast enough, or for enough people.
But I am also optimistic. I am optimistic because there are proven and affordable ways to decrease hunger and poverty, to help mothers and their babies thrive, to make rapid progress on all the Millennium Development Goals.
And I am optimistic that our impatience will lead us all to be more motivated, not less. I am optimistic that our sense of urgency will inspire us to work together, not to isolate ourselves. For if we are motivated, if we are inspired, if we work together -- then we can meet again in five years to celebrate achievements that few of us might have dared to imagine.
I'm grateful to CNN for including my TEDxChange presentation as part of their TEDTalks Tuesday series. There were several other speakers who joined our event that day, and I urge you to come to our TEDxChange website and watch their speeches as well.
• Hans Rosling, professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who uses statistics to show concrete examples of progress in child health;
• Graca Machel, a renowned international advocate for women's and children's rights, on the key role of women and girls in achieving social change;
• Mechai Viravaidya, aka Mr. Condom, the founder and chairman of the Population and Community Development Association, on creative approaches to family planning.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Melinda French Gates.
Former UK Chancellor says West is running out of money
Kenneth Clarke, the former UK chancellor, has warned the West is in grave danger of financial collapse.
Now the Justice Secretary under Britain's coalition government, Mr Clarke told a conference of prison authorities that the country faced "quite the most dramatic spending cuts in living memory."
In a forceful address to his audience, he said: "There is an extremely serious financial crisis. I actually am one of those who believes, with a grave danger of financial collapse, we’re not out of the woods in the Western world yet.
Speaking prior to next week’s comprehensive spending review, which will see most Government departments’ budgets cut by 25 per cent over four years, the Justice Secretary said: "These are difficult circumstances. There’s no one alive who remembers a crisis of this kind. It is not the usual public spending squeeze."
His remarks appeared to contradict the Prime Minister, who insisted days ago that the Coalition’s early decisions have put Britain out of the danger zone.
When the comments were put to Mr Clarke, he said: "We have rescued ourselves...at the moment".
He told the prison governors there would be no extra money available to drive through the Government’s radical jail reforms in which the government wants inmates to work a 40-hour week, in return for the minimum wage.
Mr Clarke said: "I want to be clear, so far as all these reforms go, we don’t have any money."
Big News Network.com Sunday 17th October, 2010
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Now the Justice Secretary under Britain's coalition government, Mr Clarke told a conference of prison authorities that the country faced "quite the most dramatic spending cuts in living memory."
In a forceful address to his audience, he said: "There is an extremely serious financial crisis. I actually am one of those who believes, with a grave danger of financial collapse, we’re not out of the woods in the Western world yet.
Speaking prior to next week’s comprehensive spending review, which will see most Government departments’ budgets cut by 25 per cent over four years, the Justice Secretary said: "These are difficult circumstances. There’s no one alive who remembers a crisis of this kind. It is not the usual public spending squeeze."
His remarks appeared to contradict the Prime Minister, who insisted days ago that the Coalition’s early decisions have put Britain out of the danger zone.
When the comments were put to Mr Clarke, he said: "We have rescued ourselves...at the moment".
He told the prison governors there would be no extra money available to drive through the Government’s radical jail reforms in which the government wants inmates to work a 40-hour week, in return for the minimum wage.
Mr Clarke said: "I want to be clear, so far as all these reforms go, we don’t have any money."
Big News Network.com Sunday 17th October, 2010
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Students join the large demonstrations in France
Students in France have joined the mass protests against government plans to increase the state retirement age.
High school students have swelled the ranks of protesters, claiming moves to raise the pension age will mean fewer jobs for young people.
Oil refineries and fuel depots have hard-hit by the strikes and there have been major disruptions to the country's supplies, especially at airports.
Fuel supplies to Paris and France’s main international airports are now suffering fuel shortages.
On Friday, Trapil, a company that operates a petrol pipeline to Paris’ airports announced that they’d had to shut it down due to strikes.
The pipeline is supplied by a refinery in Seine-et-Marne, which has been crippled by strikes.
Resistance grows to the government’s plan for pension reform with numbers of young people now out of work in France.
Unions have said they will turn the heat up on the government if it refuses to budge.
The unions have claimed up to three million people took part in this weekend's protests.
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High school students have swelled the ranks of protesters, claiming moves to raise the pension age will mean fewer jobs for young people.
Oil refineries and fuel depots have hard-hit by the strikes and there have been major disruptions to the country's supplies, especially at airports.
Fuel supplies to Paris and France’s main international airports are now suffering fuel shortages.
On Friday, Trapil, a company that operates a petrol pipeline to Paris’ airports announced that they’d had to shut it down due to strikes.
The pipeline is supplied by a refinery in Seine-et-Marne, which has been crippled by strikes.
Resistance grows to the government’s plan for pension reform with numbers of young people now out of work in France.
Unions have said they will turn the heat up on the government if it refuses to budge.
The unions have claimed up to three million people took part in this weekend's protests.
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Susan Boyle wows fans at book signing event
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Big News Network.com (ANI)
Susan Boyle stunned fans when she arrived to sign copies of her autobiography 'The Woman I Was Born to Be'.
The Britain's Got Talent star arrived at Waterstone's flagship store in London's Piccadilly wearing a navy blue overcoat with a purple scarf.
One fan, a man in his 50s, revealed how the star had confided that she still has the gold frilly dress which she wore for her first appearance on the show.
"I asked her if she if she still has the dress and she told me she kept it for sentimental value although she could probably make a fortune if she sold it," the Daily Express quoted the fan as saying. (ANI)
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Big News Network.com (ANI)
Susan Boyle stunned fans when she arrived to sign copies of her autobiography 'The Woman I Was Born to Be'.
The Britain's Got Talent star arrived at Waterstone's flagship store in London's Piccadilly wearing a navy blue overcoat with a purple scarf.
One fan, a man in his 50s, revealed how the star had confided that she still has the gold frilly dress which she wore for her first appearance on the show.
"I asked her if she if she still has the dress and she told me she kept it for sentimental value although she could probably make a fortune if she sold it," the Daily Express quoted the fan as saying. (ANI)
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