Sex Abuse: hyped by the Media is among, but not the most important issue the world is facing today

Life's experiences can make you bitter, hateful,  resentful or cynical if you let them. It's even worse if you trying to build a relationship with the opposite gender and you already had some share of disappointments in your life.

Sometimes it's good to go through all those things for some individuals, because sometimes you decide there and then that "I wouldn't never put anyone through what he or she put me through. " .

And sometimes it's not good at all for others because they can decide that "I will never let anyone put me through this again, therefore I will hurt them before they hurt me" and they just do that. Hurt or hurting people hurt people,

Honestly isn't that what life is all about? Maybe the best way to to label that is experience.

Unfortunately the Media, and Government, which influence the majority of the population around the world, are now all riding on the bandwagon of combating  "sexual abuse"which mainly focusses on celebrities, the Catholic Church and most recently NGO's like Oxfam.

Obviously it is important to combat sexual abuse, but it certainly  should not be on top- of the list of all the other horrors the world is facing like war, poverty and the causes of mass migration, or weapons sales.

The number of people displaced from their homes due to conflict and persecution last year exceeded 60 million for the first time in the United Nations’ history, a tally greater than the combined populations of the United Kingdom, or of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, says a new report released on World Refugee Day today.

The Global Trends 2015 compiled by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) notes that 65.3 million people were displaced at the end of 2015, an increase of more than 5 million from 59.5 million a year earlier.

The tally comprises 21.3 million refugees, 3.2 million asylum seekers, and 40.8 million people internally displaced within their own countries.

Measured against the world’s population of 7.4 billion people, one in every 113 people globally is now either a refugee, an asylum-seeker or internally displaced – putting them at a level of risk for which UNHCR knows no precedent.

In the past years Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia produce half the world’s refugees, at 4.9 million, 2.7 million and 1.1 million, respectively.

Colombia in Latin America had the largest numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs), at 6.9 million, followed by Syria’s 6.6 million and Iraq’s 4.4 million.

While the spotlight last year was on Europe’s challenge to manage more than one million refugees and migrants who arrived via the Mediterranean, the report shows that the vast majority of the world’s refugees were in developing countries in the global south.

In all, 86 per cent of the refugees under UNHCR’s mandate records were in low- and middle-income countries close to situations of conflict.

Nearly 1/2 of the world's population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day. 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty.

Like it or not, dear feminists, you might find the sexual harassment a terrible crime , so do most most of us, but there are also other crimes, sometimes must worse than sex abuse.

Harvey Weinstein, one of Hollywood’s most revered moguls and influential kingpins, who has been sexually harassing and abusing women for nearly 30 years.is a terribly sad case but in reality that is a drop of water on a hot plate, compared to the results of wars and proxy wars, or poverty around the world.

Unfortunately those horrific events hardly ever get the attention they deserves because those problems are usually the the result of our own governments deeds and actions.

"We the people" are really the only ones who can do something about it, this destructive policy of wars has to stop and we should not get side-tracked by the smoke-screens our Governments and  media are applying to divert our attention.

EU-Digest  

The above report can be used
 only if the source is mentioned 

Climate Change Could Push 100 Million Into Poverty by 2030: World Bank

There’s no doubt that President Obama is trying to shape a climate legacy and that showing leadership on all things climate related is his way of doing so. Accordingly, the President had already made a groundbreaking climate deal with Chinese premier Xi Jinping. Coming roughly a year ago, it neutralized what might otherwise have been the biggest issue in global climate talks — that is, what China will do.

And then, earlier this year, Obama’s administration delivered the finalized Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the U.S.’s push to cap its own emissions. This was all about walking the walk and cleaning up our own house.

So what was left when it came to showing leadership? Well, the major symbolic move of rejecting a pipeline that environmentalists have extensively rallied against, and that has come to symbolize the notion that many new fossil fuel projects won’t be able to go forward if the U.S. and world stay committed to the goal of not allowing warming beyond 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.

Read more: How Obama’s Keystone XL rejection gives him momentum for the Paris climate talks - The Washington Post

Ecology, Ethics, Anarchism seen through the eyes of Noam Chomsky - by Javier Sethness

There can be little doubt about the centrality and severity of the environmental crisis in the present day. Driven by the mindless "grow-or-die" imperative of capitalism, humanity's destruction of the biosphere has reached and even surpassed various critical thresholds, whether in terms of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, freshwater depletion, or chemical pollution. Extreme weather events can be seen pummeling the globe, from the Philippines - devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November of last year - to California, which is presently suffering from the worst drought in centuries.

As Nafeez Ahmed has shown, a recently published study funded in part by NASA warns of impending civilizational collapse without radical changes to address social inequality and overconsumption. Truthout's own Dahr Jamail has written a number of critical pieces lately that have documented the profundity of the current trajectory toward anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) and global ecocide: In a telling metaphor, he likens the increasingly mad weather patterns brought about by ACD to an electrocardiogram of a "heart in defibrillation."

Rather than conclude that such distressing trends follow intrinsically from an "aggressive" and "sociopathic" human nature, reasonable observers should likely associate the outgrowth of these tendencies with the dominance of the capitalist system, for, as Oxfam noted in a January 2014 report, the richest 85 individuals in the world possess as much wealth as a whole half of humanity - the 3.5 billion poorest people - while just 90 corporations have been responsible for a full two-thirds of the carbon emissions generated since the onset of industrialism.

As these staggering statistics show, then, the ecological and climatic crises correspond to the extreme concentration of power and wealth produced by capitalism and upheld by the world's governments. As a counter-move to these realities, the political philosophy of anarchism - which opposes the rule of both state and capital - may hold a great deal of promise for ameliorating and perhaps even overturning these trends toward destruction. Apropos, I had the great good fortune recently to interview Professor Noam Chomsky, renowned anarcho-syndicalist, to discuss the question of ecological crisis and anarchism as a remedy. Click on the link below for a transcript of our conversation.

Read more: Noam Chomsky: Ecology, Ethics, Anarchism

The Netherlands - Poverty: Serious rise in poverty in the Netherlands - by Alexandra Gowling

New statistics from state statistics agency CBS reveal that poverty in the Netherlands has increased sharply over the last two years, from 7,4 per cent in 2010 to 9,4 per cent in 2012.

Despite the economic crisis beginning in 2008, the full impact on household incomes has only begun to be felt over the last few years. Now, 664.000 households in the Netherlands are at risk of poverty, with a total of 1,329 million people in 2012 existing on a low income.

Estimates suggest that the poverty rate will have risen again in 2013, but less than in 2012, and decline slightly in 2014.

Adults in poverty are often employed, although of the 348.000 working poor in 2012, 165.000 were self-employed. There were also 255.000 poor social assistance benefit recipients and 79.000 people aged over 65 (i.e. retired) in poverty.

There are also more children in poverty now: over 100.000 more than in 2007. That means one in three poor people is aged under 18. In addition, people living in poverty are less likely to be immigrants to the Netherlands, with 60 per cent of people in poverty identifying as native Dutch.

Further, almost a quarter of all households in the Netherlands living below the low-income threshold in 2011 were in the Randstad, with the largest share in Amsterdam. The poverty rate has risen more in The Hague and Rotterdam than Amsterdam since 2009, however, and Rotterdam has the most poor postcode districts in the top 20.

EU-Digest

European Economy: Red Cross study slams Europe's response to the economic crisis over the past five years

Homeless Europeans

A Red Cross study slams Europe's response to the economic crisis over the past five years, saying the continent is in for a long period of unemployment, a widening poverty gap and a growing risk of social unrest. 

Annitta Underlin is the Director for Europe with IFRC (the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies). Her section combines 52 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies. In a report called 'Think differently,' published on Thursday (10.10.2013), they warn that Europe's response to the economic crisis will push the continent into social and economic decline.

Read more of the interview: 'The crisis has taken root at every level' | Europe | DW.DE | 10.10.2013

EU asks youth: How would you fight poverty? - by Elisabeth d'Auchamp

International development may not be the first thing on the mind of a 13-year-old. Talk of frameworks, donor priorities, annual reports and endless acronyms will, in most cases, be less attention-grabbing than, well, everything else in the life of a teenager.

But while the future of the globe might currently be handled by adults, youth has an equal if not a bigger stake in creating a sustainable world.

As such, aid groups are now ramping up efforts to engage young people in global development. Among them: the European Commission.

“How would you fight poverty?” the commission is asking young people in a video contest recently launched on Facebook. The competition is open to everyone aged 13-24 regardless of nationality, and the only condition is to create a video of no more than 120 seconds which answers the question, and upload it on YouTube by Nov. 1.

For the winners, the prize involves having their solution to global poverty presented to thought leaders and decision makers in Europe. They will be flown to Brussels to attend the 2013 European Development Days in November, where their short videos will be screened.

So what do you want changed to create a poverty-free world? Take out your smartphone, digital camera, tablet or any other video-taking device, and have your say — or invite a teenager or twenty-something near you to do so. Join Young Voices Against Poverty.

EU-Digest