STAN'S BLOGS

Distilling the "bigger picture" from the mish-mash of todays news is an increasingly difficult task for the average news junkie. Newspapers, TV, radio and now the World Wide Web fervently blast out headlines and monologue 24/7 as fast as they can, attempting to incite controversy that sells more advertising than the next guy. How much of what we hear and read that is truly from the heart of the speaker or author we'll probably never knows. One thing for sure, it sells advertising nicely. Standing back a moment and trying to making sense of the big picture (our world) I find a few interesting points that I can pretty well bank on: 1. Man can not stay still and has always been on the move, migrating to the next nearest valley, country or continent and... 2. The further man migrated, the better things got (in general: South America has its problems). One of the first four civilizations began around the area of we today call Ethiopia; Ethiopia today is one of the poorest coun

I thought at the very least we should be made aware of this crisis... This morning I checked FOXNews.com, the DRUDGE Report, Google News and Aljazeera's English Web site and not even a mention of the "Children starving to death in Niger." Finally on the BBC News' Web site, at the very bottom of the stories, there was a link to a series of reports . The only way I got tipped off to the story was that BBS News, much to their credit, featured it on their BBC World News program last night. Shouldn't this crisis be on the front pages? Sky News reports, "More than three million people, including almost a million children, face starvation if the world continues to ignore the worsening food crisis in Niger. A UN emergency flash appeal for the West African country was launched in May. It followed a locust invasion last year and lack of rain during the agricultural season that plunged nomadic herder and farming families into crisis." The 2004 Tsunami Disaster, an

[I'm tired of hearing "there's more crime than ever," "look at all the crime in our streets" and "crime is totally out of control"] These are usually lazy-thinking responses to our society's other pressing problems, like over population, a desperate attempt to make sense of a troubled world and/or an easy way to blame everything we don't understand on something else. Now, it would be great if we could blame "everything" that's wrong with America on the criminal—just lock them all up and everything would be "rosy" again. We could quit brainstorming why things are so bad and get back to our TV, movies and sports. But that type of thinking just won't fly. If you do a little research, you'll find that not only is the crime rate NOT causing our news-headlined woos, but that the U.S. violent crime rate has been declining for the last 14 years. "Statistics of the past decade show that crime rates in Germany, th

[My response to this years news coverage of the G8 Conference] Tony Blair at the 2005 G8 Conference in Gleneagles, Scotland failed to get all the G8 summit countries to commit to boosting foreign aid to an amount equal of 0.7 percent of national income by 2015. The United States did not make any additional pledges. There's no doubt that the United States of America is the largest contributor of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to some of the worlds poorest, underdeveloped countries. But before you start patting yourself on the back for a job well done, consider this: The U.S. giving is currently at .16% of gross national income, the SMALLEST percentage of any G-8 country. The U.S. is "2nd to last" out of 22 countries in giving as a percent of GNI. The U.S. only beats out Italy by .01% of GNI for last place among the 22 countries. Norway (.87%), Luxembourg (.85%), Denmark (.84%), Sweden (.77%) and the Netherlands (.74%) are the TOP 5 contributors as a percentage of GD

[I want to protect your right to protest&#151I may need it someday] When it comes time for you, or maybe your children's' children, to protest a government that's "gone bad," and they all do eventually, will you have the right! Or will your right be muted by local police and/or national guard, being so powerful by then as to stifle the smallest resistance, snuff out the tiniest candle light of dissent. The U.S. Declaration of Independence states, "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness..." I decided to check this "right to protest" out first hand during the WTO's Ministerial Conference on Food and Agriculture in Sacramento, California June 23rd to 25th, 2003*. Delegat