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"The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus
(what it says at the base of the Statue of Liberty,
Mother of Exiles, Liberty Enlightening the World)
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Read that again --
"Give me - give us - your poor.
Your exiles, homeless - we welcome them.
We're asking for them.
Give us your wretched refuse.
Please."
Funny, but you don't hear people talk like that much any more.
"Poverty is a state of powerlessness in which people are unable to exercise their basic human rights or control virtually any aspect of their lives. Poverty manifests itself in the inadequacy of material goods and lack of access to basic services and opportunities leading to a condition of insecurity.
All poverty is almost always rooted in human action or inaction. It can be made worse by natural calamities and human violence, oppression and environmental destruction. It is maintained by entrenched inequalities and institutional and economic mechanisms."
( the URL of this article is http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Globalism/14shalom.htm
I do not know whether this article appeared in print in Z Magazine.)
"This summer, the United Nations Development Programme issued its annual Human Development Report. The document is a stinging indictment of globalization and its horrific impact on the well-being of so many of the world's people. According to the Report, in developing countries nearly 1.3 billion people do not have access to clean water, one in seven children of primary school age is out of school, 840 million people are malnourished, and an estimated 1.3 billion people live on incomes of less than $1 a day. ... This human misery is not a consequence of globalization's insufficient advance. "More than 80 countries still have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade or more ago," comments the Report. In sub-Saharan African and some other least developed countries, per capita incomes are lower than they were in 1970. And some of the countries that are worst off are those that are most integrated into the global economy. Exports account for close to 30% of the gross domestic product of impoverished sub-Saharan Africa, for example, compared to less than 20% for the industrial nations. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where privatization and the market have expanded most rapidly, "the dismantling and weakening of the welfare state have meant cuts and deterioration in services in health and education -- across the board -- contributing to the deteriorating human outcomes. Life expectancy was lower in 1995 than in 1989 in 7 of 18 countries -- falling as much as five years since 1987. Enrolment in kindergarten declined dramatically." The gap between rich and poor has, in the words of the report, today "reached grotesque proportions." In 1960, the countries with the wealthiest fifth of the world's people had per capita incomes 30 times that of the poorest fifth. By 1990, the ratio had doubled to 60 to one, and by 1995 it stood at 74 to one. And the Asian economic crisis of the past few years has exacerbated the marginalization of the poorest countries. Within nations, the income gap has been growing as well. Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have experienced "the fastest rise in inequality ever." ... A recent study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (reported in the New York Times of Sept. 5, 1999) found that the richest 1 percent of (United States) Americans earned as much after taxes as the poorest 100 million; in 1977 the top 1 percent only (!) had as much as the bottom 49 million. The poorest 20 percent are making less today in real terms (adjusting for inflation) than they were in 1977. The assets of the world's three richest people, notes the Human Development Report, are more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries on the planet. ... The assets of the 200 richest people in 1998 were more than the total income of 41% of the world's people. The Report observes that a measly 1% tax on the wealth of these 200 people could fund primary education for all the world's children who lack access to schooling."
Folks, make four or five print copies of this page
and show them to people you know.
Email this info to four or five people.
Now is a good time.
The URL of this article on this page is
http://members.tripod.com/~doggo/doggpoverty.html#undp
"At the dawn of the new millennium, poverty is likely to remain the number one killer worldwide, the United Nations said in a study released Wednesday.
Tracing the link between health and poverty, the study says: 'Poverty is an important reason that babies are not vaccinated, clean water and sanitation are not provided, drugs and other treatments are unavailable, and mothers die in childbirth.'
Currently, there are about 1.2 billion people living below the poverty line of less than one dollar per day, and almost 3.0 billion on less than two dollars per day, compared with a global population of over 6.0 billion people, according to World Bank figures.
The UN study also says that a disproportionate burden of disease will continue to be borne by disadvantaged or marginalised women, especially those living in environmentally degraded or ecologically vulnerable areas, in zones of conflict or violence, or compelled to migrate for economic or other reasons. As a result, the feminisation of poverty will be another major threat to social and economic development.
Many health problems will continue to be exacerbated by pollution, noise, crowding, inadequate water and sanitation, improper waste disposal, chemical contamination, poisonings and physical hazards associated with the growth of densely populated cities.
Titled, ‘Health and Sustainable Development’, the study will go before the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, which meets on 30 April. The Commission is holding a three-day organisational session in preparation for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit II) scheduled to take place in South Africa in late 2002. ...
In some cases, the process of development itself is creating conditions where -- as a result of economic, political and social upheaval, environmental degradation, and uneven development or increasing inequities -- human health suffers.
... there are huge gaps and constraints in the field of human health. More than 200 million people live in countries with an average life expectancy of less than 45 years. The average life expectancy at birth in 1999 was 49.2 years in the world’s 48 poorest countries, compared to 61.4 for all developing countries, and 75.2 for industrial nations.
In many sub-Saharan African countries, life expectancy fell during the 1990s owing to the impact of HIV/AIDS. Other major setbacks in health gains occurred in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where the political and economic transition has been accompanied by decreases in life expectancy of five years for males. In some of the poorest countries of the world, one in five children still fails to reach his or her fifth birthday, mainly owing to infectious diseases related to the environment. ...
According to the report, six major diseases currently cause 90% of the deaths from communicable diseases: AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrhoeal diseases, and measles."
"The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) annual report says nearly 850 million people go to bed hungry every night, mainly in Africa and Asia.
The number of undernourished people is climbing by 5 million a year, it says."
"Hunger is on the rise again after falling steadily during the first half of the 1990s, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) annual hunger report.
'FAO's latest estimates signal a setback in the war against hunger', says The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003 (SOFI 2003). ...
After falling by 37 million during the first half of the 1990s, the number of hungry people in developing countries increased by 18 million in the second half of the decade."
"On Halloween the DOA (United States Department of Agriculture) reported that 12 million Americans were worried that they would be unable to buy food, and in 32 percent of those families some members of the family had had to go without food. ...
The U.S. Census Bureau said 7.5 percent of the population of the United States was concerned that it would not have enough money to buy food and 3.5 percent felt insecure and experienced hunger. The number of people suffering the pangs of hunger went up by 5 percent over 2001 and 8 percent over 2000. According to the Census Bureau, 34.6 million Americans lived in poverty in 2002. That was an increase of 1.7 million over the previous year.
Those statistics were released the day after Mr. Bush gave his speech. Had the results been released one day earlier, it would very likely not have affected the speech. That's because he wasn't talking about human beings. He was talking about economic growth. He was bragging about the fact that there had been a surge in economic growth during the third quarter of 2003. The economy expanded at a 7.2-percent annual rate at the same time the hungry were also expanding in numbers."
-- a page on this site on / KOYAANISQATSI /
"Last year alone, another 1.7 million Americans slipped below the poverty line, bringing the total to 34.6 million, one in eight of the population. Over 13 million of them are children. In fact, the US has the worst child poverty rate and the worst life expectancy of all the world's industrialised countries, and the plight of its poor is worsening.
... while poverty rates have been rising in the past few years, the number of Americans on welfare has been steadily declining. Another impact of the 1996 welfare reform was that the unemployed were obliged to take service jobs at the minimum wage (now $5.15 per hour) without benefits such as paid holidays or health insurance. On paper they were part of the success of the welfare-to-work project, but the jobs stocking supermarket shelves or cleaning offices usually left them worse off, especially if someone in the family fell sick."
"The number of people classed as poor in the US has increased - despite strong economic growth, say official figures.So, let's see, poverty was high in 1993, then lower from 1993 to 2000, and has been rising since. Coincidence? You decide.
An extra 1.1 million Americans dropped below the poverty line last year, according to the US Census Bureau.
There were 37 million people living in poverty in 2004, up 12.7% from the previous year. ...
The last time poverty fell in the US was in 2000 when there were 31.1 million people officially classed as poor.
The rise in poverty comes despite solid economic growth in 2004, which helped to create 2.2 million jobs in the US. ...
Sheldon Danziger, co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, said poverty rates were still much better than in the early nineties.
'The good news is that poverty is a lot lower than it was in 1993, but we went through a hell of an economic boom', Mr Danziger said."
" 'The rich got richer and the poor got poorer' is a sentence most often used to describe the economic plight of underdeveloped countries.
But last week, it was being used to describe the economy of the world’s lone superpower: The USA.
... income inequality was near all-time highs in 2004, with 50.1 percent of income going to the top 20 percent of households. Only the top five percent of households experienced real income gains in 2004. Incomes for the other 95 percent of households were flat or falling. ...
The increase in poverty came despite strong economic growth -- the economy grew a solid 3.8 percent -- which helped create 2.2 million jobs last year. But these new jobs were overwhelmingly in the services sector, where salaries are far lower than in manufacturing. Manufacturing jobs were disappearing, and the American workforce continued to lack the skills needed to fill the service sector jobs that did pay higher salaries. ...
Moreover, much of the growth in economic wealth over the last few years has been purely in financial assets going to the rich in the form of capital income -- interest, rents, and dividends, many economists say. ...
'All in all', says former Assistant Secretary of Commerce Dr. Jack Behrman, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina business school, 'America is failing in the key criterion of economic progress -- raising the standard of living of the poorest segment of society.' "
"A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population -- the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown. ...
The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes. ...
While 45.8 million Americans lack any health insurance, the top 20 per cent of earners take over half the national income. At the same time the bottom 20 per cent took home just 3.4 per cent. (Pastor Steve) Whitaker put the figures into simple English. 'The poor have got poorer and the rich have got richer,' he said."
"Not long ago, lobbyists would visit politicians and bribe or threaten them until they got what they wanted. Today, ministers lobby the lobbyists. Whenever a big business pressure group holds its annual conference or dinner, Tony Blair or Gordon Brown or another senior minister will come and beg it not to persecute the government. George Bush flies around the United States, flattering the companies that might support his re-election, offering tax breaks and subsidies even before the companies ask for them. ...
Both the president and the opposition seem to be offering the armed forces, though they do not appear to have requested it, an ever greater share of the business of government. ...
This is one of the reasons for a military budget that is now entirely detached from any possible strategic reality. As the World Socialist website has pointed out, when you add together the $368bn for routine spending, the $19bn assigned to the department of energy for new nuclear weapons, the $79bn already passed by Congress to fund the war in Iraq and the $87bn that Bush has just requested to sustain it, you find that the US federal government is now spending as much on war as it is on education, public health, housing, employment, pensions, food aid and welfare put together.
... not a single Democrat on the congressional appropriations panel dared to challenge the government's latest request."
"The World Bank has warned that rising food prices, driven partly by rising fuel costs, are pushing millions of people into extreme poverty.
World food prices are 36% above levels of a year ago, driven by problems in the Middle East and North Africa, and remain volatile, the bank said.
That has pushed 44 million people into poverty since last June.
A further 10% rise would push 10m more below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 (76p) a day, the bank said.
And it warned that a 30% cost hike in the price of staples could lead to 34 million more poor.
The World Bank estimates there are about 1.2 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day. ...
The bank suggests a number of measures to help alleviate the impact of high food prices on the poor.
They include encouraging food-producing countries to ease export controls, and to divert production away from biofuels production when food prices exceed certain limits..
Other recommendations include targeting social assistance and nutritional programmes to the poorest, better weather forecasting, more investments in agriculture, the adoption of new technologies - such as rice fortification to make it more nutritious, and efforts to address climate change.
It also said financial measures were needed to prevent poor countries being subject to food price volatility."
"We've grown accustomed to homelessness, to low wages and insecure jobs, to the need for two-parent incomes. We've gotten used to a new kind of normal, making it that much harder to change. As long as we remain silent, we face the dangers of believing that the pervasive economic disaster is nothing more than our own personal problems."
"Lao She began the novel in spring, 1936, and it was published in installments in the magazine Yuzhoufeng beginning in January, 1937. ...- A page on this site on / China /
Lao She returned to China from the United States after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. ...
In 1945, Evan King cut, rearranged, rewrote, invented characters, and changed the ending. The girl student and One Pock Li are King's, not Lao She's. King also added considerable embellishment to the two seduction scenes.
"Beijing -- "filthy, beautiful, decadent, bustling, chaotic, idle, lovable"
"No matter how hard you work or how ambitious you are, you must not start a family, you must not get sick, and you must not make a single mistake!"
"If you avoid dying of starvation when young, good for you. But it was almost impossible to avoid dying of starvation when old."
"Polanyi tells us that the gentlemen of England judged all persons poor who did not command an income sufficient to keep themin leisure. "Poor" was thus practically synonymous with "common people." Hence, the term "poor" meant all people who werein need. This included not only paupers, but also the aged, the infirm, and orphans. Most of all, however, there were theable-bodied poor, called the unemployed, who were assumed to be willing to work if only they could find employment."
"The total sum needed is of a similar size to the financial package recently approved to assist the troubled economies of South Korea and Indonesia. That money was raised in a matter of days - and how much did we feel that?"
THE MEANING OF HOSPITALITY
According to the Oxford Dictionary, Hospitality is, "a friendly and generous reception of guests or strangers." To be hospitable, therefore, means to care and show respect for another being. It is a sincere expression of appreciation, love, and humility. The natural symptom of a person whose heart is filled with gratitude, magnanimity, and religiosity, will be their eagerness to be hospitable.
The Vedic Culture of Hospitality
"Is there anybody hungry? Please come to my home, my wife has prepared a meal. We have enough to feed twenty hungry men. She has prepared the finest rice, curry, and puris (fried bread). I will not take my meal until I know that every man, woman, and child is fed."
Believe it or not, this selfless gesture of hospitality was a common occurrence in the village life of ancient India. ...During a room conversation in Tokyo, the founder of Food for Life, Srila Prabhupada explained...
"It is the duty of a householder to loudly cry, 'If anyone is hungry, please come. We have got still food.' That is the duty of a grhastha (householder or layperson)." "
always nice to see care taken to express the real spirit of compassion --
"eagerness to be hospitable"; "to loudly cry, 'If anyone is hungry, please come.' "
-- / TSEDAKAH / in another spiritual tradition
-- if you'd like to help
"The rate of child poverty in the United States is more than double that in most developed countries. Critics of welfare and other social programs say government spending doesn't solve poverty. But neither has economic growth. After the longest peace-time expansion in American history, one in five American children is growing up poor. There's mounting evidence that poverty is not just a condition; it's often a trap. Children who grow up poor are more likely to get sick, more likely to die, and far more likely to fail in school..."
"Outside the walls they stand, & at crossroads.
At door posts they stand, returning to their old homes.
But when a meal with plentiful food & drink is served, no one remembers them:
Such is the kamma of living beings."
from the Tirokudda Kanda -- "Hungry Shades Outside the Walls" -- of the Khuddaka Nikaya
-- on the "hungry ghosts" of Buddhist mythology
Have you seen any "hungry ghosts" lately?
I think I may have --
Aha! A report from Rio de Janeiro:
The Ghosts of Rio by Craig D. Guillot
John Conyers, Jr., Member of Congress,
14th Congressional District, Michigan
-- quoted on this site
John Cage
quoted here
Unfortunately I don't know the context for this.
Was Cage ironically describing a plutocratic attitude
or expressing sympathy for the poor?
"In the Rider Tarot Deck, the Five of Pentacles reveals the archetypes of hard times, ill heath and rejection. The picture on the card illustrates a thread barren crippled child on crutches, and a shabbily dressed woman. The two figures on the Five of Pentacles are cold, hungry, tired, sick and poor. They show us what it feels like to be without - to lack the basic ingredients of life. This is the specter that haunts so many in our world - a reality that is all too immediate."
"Skopke, Macedonia -- When veteran refugee worker Lynne Miller arrived here from Africa earlier this month, she stepped into a different world. ...You know, folks -- I read these news stories and articles, and work on this site, almost every day, and it really hurts. I can feel it twisting in my gut every time I read something like this. I can feel the stress grinding weeks and months off of my life expectancy.
'In Africa, we don't have special food or diets. There are no diabetics in the camps', she said. 'They just die.' ...
- The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is spending about 11 cents a day per refugee in Africa. In the Balkans, the figure is $1.23, more than 11 times greater.
- Some refugee camps in Africa have one doctor for every 100,000 refugees. In Macedonia, camps have as many as one doctor per 700 refugees -- a ratio far better than that of many communities in Los Angeles. ...
The most common explanation for the gap in resources is culture.
U.N. officials and aid workers say they must give European refugees used to cappuccino and CNN a higher standard of living to maintain the refugees' sense of dignity and stability.
Others offer a blunter assessment: They say wealthy donors in the developed world and the aid agencies they support feel more sympathy--and reach deeper into their pockets -- for those with similar skin tones and backgrounds."
(So tell me, is it weird that these officials, aid workers, and donors place a higher premium on the "sense of dignity and stability" of the European refugees than on the lives of African refugees?)
"The few (Biblical) verses on this page plainly and clearly show, without a doubt that a person that is a follower of Jesus must give all possessions to the poor -- otherwise not a Christian. Jesus does NOT say to give to support missionaries or to proselytizing missions, or to give to churches or church related institutions, or to TV evangelists or other preachers, to Bible schools, etc.; only to give all to the have-nots without conditions."
Am I suggesting you accept Kangas' assertions at face value?
No. But consider them, yes.
The purpose of Kangas' site is to advocate / Liberalism /
N.B. that non-liberals might well agree with Kangas' diagnosis
but not with his prescription
"Collectively, the wealth of the world's billionaires reached $2.2 trillion, up more than 57 percent over the last two years.Emphasis and links are mine -- ed.
Poverty is growing as well. Time reports that nearly half of the world's 6 billion residents are poor. Over one billion of them subsist on less than $1 a day. In the United States, according to the US Census Bureau, the number of impoverished Americans rose 3.7 percent in 2003. The number of children living in poverty rose 6.6 percent....
Tax rates have fallen (declined) on upper income citizens and corporations worldwide. Fifty years ago in the United States, the highest marginal income tax rate was 91 percent; today it is 34 percent. As recently as 1979, taxes on capital gains from the sale of stock, real estate and businesses were 35 percent; today they are 15 percent. Corporate taxes as a percentage of the US economy have shrunk from 4.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 1965 to just 1.5 percent in 2002. While corporate taxes have declined throughout the world, they have plummeted in the United States, leaving only Iceland among industrialized countries with a lower corporate tax burden."
So many people can't express what's on their minds
Nobody knows them - nobody ever will
Until their backs are broken, their dreams are stolen
And if they can't get what they want
Then they're gonna get angry.
Well it ain't written in the papers, but it's written on the walls
The way this country's divided to fall
So the cranes are moving on the skyline
Trying to knock down this town
But the stains on the heartland can never be removed
From this country that's sick, sad, and confused
Here comes another winter of long shadows and high hopes
Here comes another winter, waiting for utopia --
Waiting for hell to freeze over
from "Heartland" performed by The The
on the album "Infected"
copyright 1986 CBS Records