Learning my Native Tongue

Well I don't know if anyone will read this since I haven't posted for so long, but I decided to write it anyway. I have spent this last six weeks starting to learn Serbo-Croatian, the native language of my parents and my relatives. I decided to do this because my great neice asked me how to say a few words in our language( notice how it is called our I am sure other people refer to their native tongue as their language as well). So I realized that since my sister died the heritage of our family had died as well, so I thought I sould do something about that. So therefore the stimulus to learn the lanuage (as my son calls it "the old tongue"). I found several websites for Serbo-Croatian ,but many more for the different enthic groups since Yugoslavia broke up in the 1980's and the 1990's. The most sites that I found were for Croatian( where my Dad came from). So I am learning that particular form of the language. Yet there are many words that I have not heard of since my mother and father spoke an uneducated form of the vocabulary(they never went to school there and only went to public school here). My dad learned on his own to read and write Yugoslavian. It was a broken form of the langauge with some English words mixed in. So now I find myself at the ripe old age of 58 trying to learn all over again(I could understand Yugoslavian but never spoke it). I am also listening to radio stations from Croatia to get a better grasp of the verbal word. It is stimulating to my mind and it something that I now find that I can do in all the time I have now in my life.

Most Americans Believe Man Created by God

A Harris Interactive poll poll showed that 54% of Americans believe in some sort of divine source for human evolution. This a staggering stastic for the US and its science based education system.I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject nor do I aspire to be. What concerns me is the fact that this view has proponents that want to be taught in schools as a viable science subject. It seems to me like a religious subject of discussion not one for the science classroom. Where would you teach the other creation stories from the other major religions in the world. The fundamental right in the religious groups are the most vocal for this view,where as most of the established religions see a place for evolution as a study of science and not to be confused as a disproof of God.There is no either or here, but two different topics one for one classroom, the other for another. It is the resonsibility of our governments and the judical systems to ensure that all religous beliefs are taught and to be protected of this right not to the favor of one over the other. Science is not an alternative for religion, nor vice versa. Both have their place in society one to explain the physical,the other the spirtual. The Harris poll can be found here

Websites being shut down in China

Well I slept 14 hours last night and feel a little bit better today. Still waiting for phone calls from my daughter and my son. It is lonely when you live so far away from your children and I do not know if I will ever get used to it. Sure there are friends who you have in your life but family takes a special place in one's life. It's the blood thing. Thicker than water and all that stuff. I remember growing up on my parents farm,where my two aunt's farms and my uncle's were right next to each other so there were laneways inter-crossing between each farms. We would gather every Saturday night at the oldest aunt's house and the children would watch hockey while the adults drank home made wine,played cards,sang songs and agrued whose tobacco crop was better. They were good times, no they were great times.You knew who you were. There was family all around,so if you had a problem, you could get advice from some one else across the fence. I miss those times.

Found this article at Free Press about how China is shutting down websites that appear to contradict goverment policy and that are more interactive. It can be found here

It is September 24th,Monday here in Ontario. I finally slept last night; took my sleeping pill. I have been trying to sleep without it to no avail so I succumed and took it. Usally when I take it I am drowsey for the whole day up to about 6,so here I am writing this with a cloud in my head. I have read many aricles on mental illness and the one most common factor in all of them is the disruption of sleep. To rest the mind is important not only to mental functioning but also to physical well being as well. Any way I found this article on rice and how they have developed a new strain of rice by combining a hardy gene that is resistent to drought as well. The new strain uses less water but produces more grain. This is a valuable advance since as constraints on water use become more prevalent, in the areas where rice is grown, this will allow for a stable supply of food for these areas. The full article is found at the following(there is some scientific jargon): Hardy Rice:More Food

It is interesting that I have found today an article on the Global condition of Mental Illness. Basically less money is spent on mental health issues in developing countries(seems obivous) than in the developed countries. The interesting facts are the extent to which the illness is found in the world,the amount of service that people receive(America has one of the lowest) and the issue of age and gender. The article can be found here

What to do next in Boc's Blog

Well I have not been able to write much of anything lately. Been under the weather with my depression. I have a bad time in the autumn with my illness. I have decided to change these entries because I have found enough widgets to cover all the facets of world news. I hope you find them useful and informative. It took me a week or so to do this. At least I was able to that. So what am I going to write about now? I have been looking at a number of blogs and it seems like the majority of them talk about themselves,even though I read that this was a fatal thing to do. So how do I do these entries without "killing" myself? I have now looked at a number of news blogs and the forum Topix and it seems like I was on the right track by picking out a news entry that was news worthy and the judge of that is me just as the judge of those choosing the news headlines for their blogs is up to them. Therefore starting tommorow I will combine the two approachs: a personal comment and an editorial comment about a news headline.

The Lost Iraq

Oxfam has issued a devasting report on the conditions in Iraq after the invasion by coalition forces. To read an article on the state of the Iraq nation see:

Oxfam reports one-third of Iraqis in need of Emergency aid

The Forgotten Congo

The Eastern Congo has for the past decade seen a consistent and systematic plunder of the people. Foreign governments have turned a blind eye to this region and thus have allowed the situation to continue.For a article on the subject in the Washington Post see
Prevalence of Rape in Eastern Congo Described as Worst in World

First Day of School for Some Last Day of Life for Others

I was watching television tonight and there were advertisments about kids going back to school. They were all bright eyed,fed well, and dancing amidst copious amounts of clothes, books,computers and various other things that go with the first day of school. I thought about my own children, when they were young, how we would go shopping and buy them everything they needed for that first day. Then I came across this article aat Global Issues and thought I would include it today.

"Today, over 27,000 children died around the world

Around the world, 27–30,000 children die every day.
That is equivalent to:
1 child dying every 3 seconds
20 children dying every minute
A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring almost every week
An Iraq-scale death toll every 15–35 days
10–11 million children dying every year
Over 50 million children dying between 2000 and 2005
The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. In spite of the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage."
Table of contents for this page
This web page has the following sub-sections:
Why is this tragedy not in the headlines?
Recent headlines in context
Notes and Sources
Sources for child deaths
Sources for Asia Tsunami comparison
Sources for Iraq comparison
Related Information

"Why is this tragedy not in the headlines?
UNICEF’s 2000 Progress of Nations report tried to put these numbers into some perspective:
The continuation of this suffering and loss of life contravenes the natural human instinct to help in times of disaster. Imagine the horror of the world if a major earthquake were to occur and people stood by and watched without assisting the survivors! Yet every day, the equivalent of a major earthquake killing over 30,000 young children occurs to a disturbingly muted response. They die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.
— A spotty scorecard, UNICEF, Progress of Nations 2000
Unfortunately, it seems that the world still does not notice. It might be reasonable to expect that death and tragedy on this scale should be prime time headlines news. Yet, these issues only surface when there are global meetings or concerts (such as the various G8 summits, the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005, etc).
Furthermore, year after year, we witness that when those campaigns end and the meetings conclude, so does the mainstream media coverage. It feels as though even when there is some media attention, the ones who suffer are not the ones that compel the mainstream to report, but instead it is the movement of the celebrities and leaders of the wealthy countries that makes this issue newsworthy.
Even rarer in the mainstream media is any thought that wealthy countries may be part of the problem too. The effects of international policies, the current form of globalization, and the influence the wealthy countries have on these processes is rarely looked at.
Instead, promises and pledges from the wealthy, powerful countries, and the corruption of the poorer ones—who receive apparently abundent goodwill—make the headlines; the repeated broken promises, the low quality and quantity of aid, and conditions with unfair strings attached do not.
Accountability of the recipient countries is often mentioned when these issues touch the mainstream. Accountability of the roles that international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and their funders (the wealthy/powerful countries), rarely does. The risk is that citizens of these countries get a false sense of hope creating the misleading impression that appropriate action is taken in their names.
It may be harsh to say the mainstream media is one of the many causes of poverty, as such, but the point here is that their influence is enormous. Slience, as well as noise, can both have an effect." Global Isusues at http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty/death

The Third World

Our free enterprise system has killed more people than the Nazis did in World war II. Most third world countries carry a tremendous burden of debt, often times 2/3 of it gross national income. This debt must be forgiven to allow these areas to escape the never ending spiral of poverty,disease and war. Below is a list from the U.N. outlining the poorest countries in the world and the conditions surrounding them.

"World's 50 Poorest Countries
UN list of least developed countries1
Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kiribati, Laos, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, East Timor, Togo, Tuvalu, Uganda, Tanzania, Vanuatu, Yemen, Zambia.
Trends among the world's poorest countries
In the second half of the 1990s the average per capita income in the world's poorest countries, when measured in terms of current prices and official exchange rates, was $0.72 a day and the average per capita consumption was $0.57 a day. This implies that on average there was only $0.15 a day per person to spend on private capital formation, public investment in infrastructure, and the running of vital public services, including health, education, administration, and law and order.
In 2001, 34% of the population aged between 15 and 24 was illiterate in the poorest countries.
About 60% of the poorest countries experienced civil conflict of varying intensity and duration in the period 1990–2001 that, in most cases, erupted after a period of economic stagnation and regression. In Rwanda, for example, average private consumption per capita fell by more than 12% between 1980 and 1993, the year before the genocide occurred.
1. The UN classifies countries as “least developed” based on three criteria: (1) annual gross domestic product (GDP) below $900 per capita; (2) quality of life, based on life expectancy at birth, per capita calorie intake, primary and secondary school enrollment rates, and adult literacy; and (3) economic vulnerability, based on instability of agricultural productions and exports, inadequate diversification, and economic smallness. Half or more of the population in the 50 least developed countries listed above are estimated to live at or below the absolute poverty line of U.S. $1 per day."
These areas in the world are also political unstable and are strive with civil war adding to the misery of the population. Most of them aspire to democracy but fall short in practice. Usually the countries are ruled by an autocratic form of government. The population are easy prey for illegal activites and often succumb to forms of forced labour. As noted in the above list a majority of the countries are in Africa and southeast Asia.

Mauritania Abolishes Slavery

Mauritania, a country in North West Africa, officially abolished slavery today in its parliament. The country has a dubious record of being one of the leaders in the world for slave trade. With this passage of this bill offenders will be given a sentence of 5-10 years in jail. In the World there are estimated to be any where from 12 million to 200 million slaves in the world.The U.N. defines a slave as anyone whose movement or decision making abilities are curtailed such that they do not have the right to choose employers. This definition would cover bonded labour to child labour. Debt bondage is one of the most common forms of slavery. This is where labour is exchanged for debt owing.However the worker may be underage,conditions of work may be unsafe and under paid in relations to normal wages. These debts are usually inflated or illegal( ie a parent may give her chid to work thinking that this will reduce her debt). Then these people are held against their will or to the extreme sold. Women in Eastern Europe are being sold for sexual slaves as I write this. Women and children are the most vulnerable to debt bondage.
Modern-day slaves can be found laboring as servants or concubines in Sudan, as child "carpet slaves" in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances.

Aids in Arifca

Aids is running rampant in Sub Sahran Arifca. By the year 2010,there will be more than25,000,000 people infected with the aids virus. It continues to spread more in Central and Eastern Arifca.Women have the highest incidence of infection and bear the most burden. They have to look after the sick and dying.More than 2,000,000 children have died from Aids.Grandparents are also under pressure as mothers die they are forced to look after the children. For an excellant article on Aids see: Aids in Africa

China Retreats from Deserts

China is proceeding with its plan to relocate Chinese farmers who live on the edge of deserts.This loss of land will be amplified as Global warming proceeds. For China, the melting of Tibet's glaciers well effect their water supply and put a further restraint on China's agricultural land. Water is needed for the production of rice. Rice is the main crop of southeast Asia and constitutes the main diet of this area. Rice is presently a relatively cheap commodity,allowing it to be affordable to the areas poor. The Chinese farmers who are being relocated have farmed the land for generations and do not want to leave. The areas are being planted with wild grass and trees(over a billion trees have been planted so far). The price of rice has been rising as of late and this puts further strains on the backs of the poor. Some predict that as the price of rice rises the area of southeast Asia will become more politically unstable. For a in depth look at China's efforts to stave off the deserts and its effect on people see:
China sounds retreat against encroaching deserts.

China in Africa

China is actively exploring for minerals and oil in remote areas of Chad,Angola,Nigeria( already an oil exporter) Congo( where recent skirmishes between the Congo and Uganda have occured over oil rights on their borders) and Guinea. They are re- building and establishing new infra- structure,like roads ,railroads,and airports and spending money on health care and education. China has come to these countries with plenty of money from their trade surplus to the rest of the western world. China is also willing to accept any form of governing body in the countries, a far cry from the Soviet approach of the early sixties and seventies. China is a new Communist State out for profit at any cost. Nations in Africa from the west coast to the east coast are eager for the Chinese investment. China has set up a novel way for the countries to repay for the improvents by assigning the debt payment through the mineral and oil rights and revenue. The west has been left behind in this new search for oil and the African countries have also left the west behind, prefering to deal with a partner that turns the other cheek.

Mortgage loan companies have put the average working class citizen into a cycle of debt. They have made billions of dollars by preying on people who would have been unable to be on the housing market. They exploited the American dream of owning one's own home. Recently the Federal Reserve has pumped money into the system to shore up the major lending institutions on the Dow Jones. This is nothing short of a blatent disregard for the American population and is an example of how far our free enterprise system can takes us. For an indepth article from a left of central pespective see Predatory Lending: Cheating Workers Out of House and Home

Darfur: A Reflection of our World

Today the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, released an alarming report about the abuses that the woman of Darfur have been subject to. This is rape. Members of the Sudanese army and the Armed Militia routinely rape women at gun point; as they gather food for their animals and firewood, saying that they must cooperate or die.
The UN has promised to have a contigent of 24,000 troops in place to moniter the situation. These troops will come from various countries. Hilary Clinton,when asked if she would send troops to th Sudan,said she would sent support in the form of aid if she was President. I have not heard any response from President Bush.
It is estimated that more than 200,000 have been killed and 2.5 million displaced.The situation in Darfur is a sad testimony to the state of the world where humans have no respect for other human beings. To rape and kill attentionly,relfects on all of us,and how man has truly not progressed much from ancient times.

News Paper Articles on Hurricane Dean

Hurricane Dean Pummels Jamacia

Cayman Islands Brace for Hurricane Dean

Hurricane Dean"Extremely Dangerous",Heads Towards Yucatan

Texas prepares for Hurricane Dean

Texas battens down hatches as Hurricane Dean moves

Endeavour is to return early due to hurricane

Well I think I am slowly getting the hang of this, will write some tomorrow.

Happy Birthday India

India marked its 6oth birthday on August 15th. Now the world's largest Democracy is ready to take its place as an economic giant in the 21st century. It has a growing middle class,due in part to its prosperity in the telecommication industry.However as recent flooding has shown,the majority of India's population lives in poverty. Only when this class of people can move toward more economic stability,will India have achieved its goals.
For more on India's birthday go to http://www.nysun.com/article/60552

The Canadian Green Party has put out a FAQ about a new future North American Union(SPP treaty). This will affectly create one country with shared currency,military,and the sharing of resources. Canada and Mexico have the most to lose while the USA will gain from this Union. It is no surprise that the Bush administration has been actively pursuing this deal.

To view the web page go to http://www.greenparty.ca/en/policy/documents/deeper_look_spp?origin=redirect

After puchasing the pretigous Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones,Murdoch( a billionaire who has made his money off of comunication enterprises) has decided to go after the New York Times. Slowly the American free press is being gobbled up into the hands of a few people. The consequences of this action will be felt in the future, as the news and its content should be as neutral as possible, allowing the people to decide the events on their own. Murdoch also owns My Space on the internet. The full article as well as Murdoch opinion on the New York Times can be found athttp://www.freepress.net/news/25387