
A tous ceux qui m'ont envoyé leurs meilleurs voeux pour 2008,
je leur signale qu'à ce jour cela n'a absolument servi à rien !
Pour l'année 2009 prière de m'envoyer du fuel, du fric ou des chèques-repas !
Merci d'avance.
The UN meetings were abuzz that the US could find $700 billion for a bailout of its corrupt and errant banks but couldn't’t find a small fraction of that for the world’s poor and dying.
It’s easy to be cynical about grand challenges like the MDGs. When world leaders assembled at the UN in September 2000 on the eve of the new millennium and adopted eight goals to fight poverty, hunger, disease, and deprivation by 2015, most of the leaders at the UN and those in public paying attention probably expected that the goals would sink out of sight by the next week’s news cycle. Global goals are for photo ops, not for grown-ups, is a popular view of our cynical age.
Yet something has happened which brings world leaders back time and again to declare their commitment to the MDGs. Part of it is the stark reality that 10 million children under the age of 5 die each year of extreme poverty. Even the most hardened of cynics know that this stark fact is dangerous for our hopes for peace and stability, as well as for sustaining human values and quality of life on a crowded planet.
Part of the continued interest is the understanding that the MDGs are not fantasies but practically achievable objectives. Measles deaths have been reduced by 91 per cent in Africa since 2000 through MDG-based initiatives. Malaria deaths have plummeted in recent years in Rwanda, Sao Tome, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, Kenya, and other countries, because of the mass distribution of bed nets and effective medicines. Food production has roughly doubled in Malawi because of an ingenious voucher program for seed and fertiliser for impoverished farmers.
A third reason for the MDG staying power is that poor people and their governments have taken seriously the call to fight poverty. Throughout Africa, governments and NGOs have devised specific plans of action – to grow more food; train community health workers; extend coverage of medicines for AIDS, TB, malaria and other killers; pave roads; and install solar-power pumps for safe water and irrigation. The plans have been made. Special financing mechanisms like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria have been devised, and have proven their worth.
The laggards in the struggle for the MDGs are not the poor countries or their ostensibly corrupt governments. The laggards are the rich world, so full of promises and high rhetoric and so low on delivery. The MDGs are falling short because of a lack of promised financing to put in place the clinics, schools, roads, power, and other investments needed for their success. Six years ago, the rich countries pledged in Monterrey, Mexico to “make concrete efforts toward the international target of 0.7 per cent of GNP in official development assistance.” Yet the United States stands are 0.16 per cent, Japan at 0.17, Italy at 0.19, Canada at 0.28, Germany at 0.37, and France at 0.39.
heeft Bart De Wever, die toch een fijne historicus is, zijn les niet geleerd: waar leven we hier, in Vlaanderen, dat in 50 jaar tijd een eigen parlement etc....heeft... en bovendien zijn we de meest welvarende region van de wereld, dus van het zonnestelsel, dus van de melkweg...
'Wat niet verboden is, is toegelaten', luidt het op het kabinet Binnenlandse Zaken op onze vraag of de Chirojongens van Emelgem hun leeuwenvlag hadden moeten verwijderen. Volgens Binnenlandse Zaken is het gebruik van vlaggen helemaal vrij, zolang ze natuurlijk niet indruisen tegen de openbare orde. Hakenkruisvlaggen bijvoorbeeld zijn verboden. Alleen in protocollaire omstandigheden wordt voorgeschreven welke vlaggen moeten worden gehesen en hoe die moeten hangen.- Michel Daerden, de minister van Sport van de Franse Gemeenschap, is tijdens de Olympische Spelen dronken opgemerkt op de tribunes van het tennis en het hockey. 'Michel Daerden heeft een echt drankprobleem, dat weet iedereen', reageert Vlaams minister van Sport Bert Anciaux donderdag in Het Laatste Nieuws. 'Maar hij is niet de enige. Anderen houden het verborgen, maar er wordt nog altijd zwaar gezopen in de politiek. Het ergert me dat al die overdadige alcohol zo vlot gebanaliseerd en zo makkelijk aanvaard wordt.' De woordvoerster van Daerden laat vanuit Peking weten dat 'de minister onmogelijk in de kennelijke staat kan geweest zijn waarin hij is beschreven.'
What? You've been giving away your urine for free?
All these years, you've been sitting there like an idiot—or standing, or squatting, or whatever it is you do—pissing away a perfectly good liquid asset. Turns out, you could have sold it.
I bet somebody will figure out pretty soon how to monetize toilet waste. And it won't be the government; it'll be the private sector. Did you see the New York Times story a few weeks back about restaurant grease? It's being illegally siphoned from filthy bins and barrels. Bandits are selling it for conversion to biodiesel. When bandits start siphoning public toilets, maybe governments will wake up and get in on the action. And you'll stop having to pay.
"The worst misfortune that can happen to an ordinary man is to have an extraordinary father."
In the report, he estimated the costs of climate change at between 5 per cent and 20 per cent of global gross domestic product. But Lord Stern said data published since the report came out had led him to change his mind.
A roosters' job is to watch over the hens. Even if he has only one female, a rooster will stand near her through the day as she scratches in the dirt for morsels, and takes dirt baths. He will crow throughout the day, letting the world know, "I'm the man!"
de Quintessens van Europa is de communautaire methode
B. Somers - "het zal geen écht regeringsakkoord zijn, want op 10 dagen was er niet genoeg tijd om in de details te treden"
De Jury is dan ook van oordeel dat deze spots:
kleinerend overkomen door de jagers in diskrediet te brengen ( vermaak jagers wordt op overdreven wijze uitvergroot waardoor de jagers in het belachelijke worden getrokken);
stereotypes en vooroordelen tav jagers bestendigen die indruisen tegen de maatschappelijke evolutie mbt wildbeheer en aanvaard gedrag van jagers, en derhalve stigmatiserend overkomen;
"Verloren woorden en gebaren,
die niet bij Bruegel waren
zullen de vreugde niet verstaan"
"de dagen dat ik nog de tijd vind en de rust om het gedicht te lezen...
die dagen... zeldzaam zijn ze, en niet genoeg geprezen"
"al wat ik kreeg van taal en kunde, bleef ik slijpen tot het zong,
al was 't van 't slijpen, ...dat 't verdunde..."
Ask any modern storyteller and they will say there is always a moment when they are touched with fire, with what we like to call inspiration, and this goes back and back to the beginning of our race, to fire and ice and the great winds that shaped us and our world.