Updates from June, 2009

• Review: The Munk Debates

  j_ling 10:42 pm on June 29, 2009 | 3 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: debate (3), foreign aid, inspiration (7), stats (5)

  “We need com­pas­sion to get our­selves started, and enlight­ened self-interest to get our­selves seri­ous … that’s the alliance that changes the world” Paul Col­lier

  “Evi­dence over­whelm­ingly demon­strates that aid to Africa has made the poor poorer, and the growth slower. ” Dambisa Moyo
  

  “Unless there is recog­ni­tion that women are most vul­ner­a­ble… and you do some­thing about social and cul­tural equal­ity for women, you’re never going to defeat this pan­demic.” Stephen Lewis

  ***

  

  I absolutely love the con­cept of bring­ing together ideas, as I think it is one of the most vital plat­forms in which we can learn and grow from one another. Con­sider The Munk Debates, a remark­able debate series that I followed/am fol­low­ing that brings together promi­nent lead­ers to debate about major issues con­cern­ing the world and Canada.  It is one of the few plat­forms that brings together the opin­ions of promi­nent peo­ple and places them head to head against each other and see how they fare. The model of this debate also works around the fact that the debate is sub­ject to pub­lic scrutiny and opinion.

  In terms of organ­i­sa­tion, they have been wise in their selec­tion of debaters. ie. Stephen Lewis — pretty much a Cana­dian icon, or con­tro­ver­sial writ­ers like Dambisa Moyo that would really draw the audi­ence to par­tic­i­pate and con­sider the topic of choice. The cho­sen top­ics are also well timed, the first one set just before the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Novem­ber 2008, urg­ing the pub­lic to con­sider global secu­rity in light of the elections.

  So, if you haven’t been fol­low­ing the debates (There is one every 6 months), here are three rea­sons why (aside from the usual expo­sure to new ideas):

  1) It’s FREE

  The organ­is­ers have done an amaz­ing job mak­ing the debates acces­si­ble online. The debates are streamed live, can be re-watched, audio, mp3, read the debate tran­script, etc. Did I men­tion that its all free? Enough said. Watch!

  2) SAVES you time

  There are few places online that you are able to find Stephen Lewis, Paul Col­lier, Dambisa Moyo, Mia Far­row, John Bolton’s, etc. opin­ions all in one place. All of them are extremely influ­en­tial and respected indi­vid­u­als in their respec­tive fields and it’s a one stop/click/video for amaz­ing insights into dif­fer­ent top­ics. It also enables you to see their posi­tions on cer­tain top­ics, which would help you greatly in terms of referring/researching on a topic/individual should you want to inves­ti­gate in more depth their pub­li­ca­tions and opinions.

  3) COMMENT on your position

  For a cer­tain period after the debates, an online pol­ing sta­tion (open to a ran­dom selct group of Cana­dian pan­elist) and medi­ated forum (open to the gen­eral pub­lic) is set up. You get to see and com­ment on an ‘opin­ions forum’, and some­times you find some of the most amaz­ing ideas and posi­tions that the pub­lic has taken on it. A data analy­sis is also run based on the online pol­ing sta­tion and you can see the break­down of opin­ion on the debate topic as well as the key points that are brought up dur­ing the debate.

  In other words, you watch the debates, com­ment, and view stats. Love it.

  ***
  Past debate topics:

  

  ***

  

  ***

  ***

  Some future debate topic lineups:

  Reli­gion is a force of good in the world

  More Free mar­ket and less gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion is the answer to our eco­nomic woes

  Final thoughts: Ranked: 9/10. Improve­ment: Bet­ter adver­tis­ing. I only found this after nav­i­gat­ing heav­ily through the Globe and Mail.

  Note: All pic­tures are taken from http://www.munkdebates.com

   

• On Human Trafficking

  j_ling 2:00 pm on June 26, 2009 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (10), stats (5), world (5)

  Today I’m writ­ing about some­thing a lit­tle closer to the heart: Malaysia

  Recently, the U.S. State Depart­ment in its annual Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Report 2009 (page 197) down­graded Malaysia from Tier 2 to Tier 3, black­list­ing it world­wide along with 16 other coun­ties for not enforc­ing human traf­fick­ing laws. Malaysia cur­rently joins other black­listed coun­tries such as Saudi Ara­bia, Sudan, Syria, Niger and Burma.

  Malaysia has been fac­ing con­stant scrutiny for its lack of regard of the abuse and exploita­tion of migrant work­ers and has had its rank­ing hov­er­ing between Tier 2 and 3 for the last 10 years. In 2001, it was black­listed, but improved its rank­ing to Tier 2 for the fol­low­ing years. How­ever, in 2007, it was down­graded once again to Tier 2, and in 2008, after the enact­ment of the Anti-Trafficking in Per­sons Act 2007, Malaysia regained its sta­tus as a Tier 2 country.

  Tier 3 coun­tries face pos­si­ble sanc­tions such as the with­hold­ing of non-humanitarian, non-trade related U.S. aid and fund­ing for gov­ern­ment offi­cials to par­tic­i­pate in edu­ca­tional and cul­tural exchange programs.

  As a response to the down­grade, two new divi­sions have been estab­lished under the Home Min­istry. They are the Inter­na­tional Divi­sion and the Research, Devel­op­ment and Mon­i­tor­ing Division.

  ***

  This is my HOPE to my country:

  That we would address this issue with the respect and the seri­ous­ness that it deserves — the effec­tive­ness of long-term pre­ven­tion and improve­ment requires a com­mit­ment to reforms, poli­cies and Acts.

  ***

  From the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Report 2009 :

  • The Inter­na­tional Labor Orga­ni­za­tion (ILO)—the United Nations agency charged with address­ing labor stan­dards, employ­ment, and social pro­tec­tion issues—estimates that there are at least 12.3 mil­lion adults and chil­dren in forced labor, bonded labor, and com­mer­cial sex­ual servi­tude at any given time.

  • Of these vic­tims, the ILO esti­mates that at least 1.39 mil­lion are vic­tims of com­mer­cial sex­ual servi­tude, both transna­tional and within coun­tries. Accord­ing to the ILO, 56 per­cent of all forced labor vic­tims are women and girls.

  

  Image from Google images: http://vietnameseworkersabroad.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/human-wrists1.jpg

  ***

  “The root causes of migra­tion and traf­fick­ing greatly over­lap. The lack of rights afforded to women serves as the pri­mary causative fac­tor at the root of both women’s migra­tions and traf­fick­ing in women…By fail­ure to pro­tect and pro­mote women’s civil, polit­i­cal, eco­nomic and social rights, gov­ern­ments cre­ate sit­u­a­tions in which traf­fick­ing flourishes.”

  Rad­hika Coomaraswamy, UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Vio­lence Against Women

  ***

  Sources/Further Read­ing:

  http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47332http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Wednesday/National/2590572/Article/index_html
  http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/123357.pdf

  photo credit: vene­tia jou­bert sarah oosterveld

  Thumb­nail pic: http://www.on-linecreative.com/library/humanity/images/human%20trafficking2.jpg

   

• On making the grass greener

  j_ling 11:13 am on June 24, 2009 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (10), stats (5), world (5)

  In the past 30 years, we have spent $2.74 tril­lion on for­eign aid, seen the rise and fall of the dot­com bub­ble, wit­nessed some of the worst civil wars in the cen­tury ( ie. Lebanon, Rwanda, Alge­ria, etc.), lived and are liv­ing through dif­fer­ent pan­demics ( ie. SARS, Bird flu, Swine flu, etc), man­aged to bring the world on the edge of global warm­ing and lived through two Bush administrations.

  
  See Car­toons by Car­toon by Daryl Cagle — Cour­tesy of Politicalcartoons.com — Email this Cartoon

  de4icfvz6n

  Some­times, you have to won­der, is our world and human­ity get­ting any bet­ter? Any more civilised? Here’s some stats from The Econ­o­mist to shed some light.

  1) In China 25 years ago, over 600m people—two-thirds of the population—were liv­ing in extreme poverty (on $1 a day or less). Now, the num­ber on $1 a day is below 180m.

  2) In the world as a whole, a stun­ning 135m peo­ple escaped dire poverty between 1999 and 2004. This is more than the pop­u­la­tion of Japan or Russia—and more peo­ple, more quickly than at any other time in history.

  3) In South Asia, the num­ber of those with­out clean water has been nearly halved since 1990.

  4) In 2007 Unicef, the United Nations child-welfare body, said that for the first time in mod­ern his­tory fewer than 10m chil­dren were dying each year before the age of five.

  5) The long march to lit­er­acy is near­ing an end: three-quarters of peo­ple aged 15–25 were lit­er­ate in 1975; now the rate is nearly nine-tenths.

  6) A World Bank study of 19 poor coun­tries con­cluded that every 1% increase in national income per head trans­lates into a 1.3 point fall in extreme poverty.

  7) In 2007, the global econ­omy entered its fifth year of over 4% annual growth—the longest period of such strong expan­sion since the early 1970s. ( yes yes, this is rather hard to swal­low given cur­rent situations).

  The Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund reck­ons that in 2008 China and India will be the largest con­trib­u­tors to world­wide growth for the first time.

  9) Since the mid-1990s, the incomes of the poor­est fifth have risen every­where except, mar­gin­ally, in Latin Amer­ica, where they have been affected by the after-shocks of debt crises. In Asia, the real incomes of the poor­est fifth rose 4% a year; in Africa, by 2% a year, faster than the rise for other income groups.

  10) In 1990 those on $1 a day accounted for more than a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion of devel­op­ing coun­tries. By 2015, on cur­rent rates, the pro­por­tion of very poor peo­ple should have shrunk to 10%.

  11) The num­ber of con­flicts (both inter­na­tional and civil) fell from over 50 at the start of the 1990s to just over 30 in 2005.

  12) There has been a dra­matic rise in the num­ber of con­flicts resolved. Dur­ing this decade civil wars have come to an end or have been restrained in Aceh, Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Nepal, Timor-Leste and Sierra Leone.

  13) Despite claims to the con­trary by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, the num­ber of inter­na­tional ter­ror­ist inci­dents has risen since Sep­tem­ber 11th 2001, after a decade of decline. The num­ber of deaths from ter­ror­ist acts has climbed almost every­where. How­ever, this pic­ture of world­wide growth is mis­lead­ing. While it is true that Asia, Latin Amer­ica and Europe have all expe­ri­enced more ter­ror­ist attacks than before, they are still rare.

  14) Since 2001, the Mid­dle East has suf­fered more vio­lence and fatal­i­ties than the rest of the world put together.

  ***
  

  So what does this all mean? Step­ping back and look­ing at things on a LARGER scale, we can really see that we’re shap­ing a bet­ter world, even if it means piec­ing it together

  s      l      o     w      l      y.

  

  photo credit: greencandy8888

  Patience is a Virtue.

   

• I have something to say

  j_ling 7:47 pm on June 13, 2009 | 4 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (10), Global Voices (2), journalism (3), motivation (4)

  One of my BIGGEST sources of moti­va­tion of start­ing this blog, (besides major encour­age­ment and help in get­ting this blog up and run­ning, from one of the most incred­i­ble peo­ple in my life, Andre) is a this post by Ethan Zuckerman.

  His post walks us through a Lok­man Tsui’s PHD Dis­ser­ta­tion on Global Voices and the peo­ple behind it. He takes us through three mod­els of jour­nal­ism, essen­tially, how we need to move away from the cur­rent mod­els and towards objec­tiv­ity as a key jour­nal­is­tic value towards HOSPITALITY.

  Lok­man pro­poses that “the inter­net has chal­lenged us to rethink and re-imagine jour­nal­ism and democ­racy” and we have not yet done a good job fully uti­liz­ing its poten­tial. If we then com­pare media to pol­i­tics, where polit­i­cal democ­ra­cies have func­tioned best where they rep­re­sent a broad range of inter­ests, opin­ions and peo­ple, why then, can’t media be rep­re­sen­ta­tive and as hos­pitable, offer­ing a space for conversation?

  ***

  “Why has hos­pi­tal­ity slipped away? Is it because we’re expe­ri­enc­ing the false inti­macy of a glob­al­ized world? Lok­man sug­gests that we’re see­ing a para­dox of choice emerg­ing online — as we’ve got more choices, we often make deci­sions that iso­late and cocoon our­selves. Part of this may come from the biggest way in which we iso­late our­selves — we restrict the flow of peo­ple across national bor­ders to a much greater extent than we restrict finan­cial or cul­tural flows. Per­haps we’ve become bet­ter at acco­mo­dat­ing a person’s CDs or movies, but less good at acco­mo­dat­ing the per­son her­self.
  

  This means that hos­pi­tal­ity is a duty and an oblig­a­tion, but that we shouldn’t pre­tend that we can pre­vent exclu­sion from some spaces.”

  - Ethan Zuk­er­man, Lok­man Tsui on hos­pi­tal­ity, jour­nal­ism and Global Voices.

  ***

  All that being said, I would hardly imag­ine to call myself a jour­nal­ist, but, I, at the very least, am going to do my part to offer this s p a c e for con­ver­sa­tion, and share my opin­ions.  I truly believe that hav­ing our ideas out there is becom­ing increas­ingly impor­tant in a con­nected world. So here’s a lit­tle back­ground on myself and what I plan to use this s p a c e for.

  I have some­thing to say. Do you?

  Thumb­nail Pic­ture Credit: Uploaded on Decem­ber 3, 2006 by :petra:BadInternetSorry!!!