this is another trial
Politics 102
this is another test
the cat sat on the matt.
Global Issues Overview
Global Issues Overview
There are many international bodies covering various aspects of economics and trade, but the United Nations has become the most important forum to address issues transcending national boundaries and issues which cannot be resolved by any one country alone.
The United nation’s publishers a Global Issue Overview.
Its initial goals of safeguarding peace, protecting human rights, establishing the framework for international justice and promoting economic and social progress, in the seven decades since its creation the United Nations has added on new challenges, such as climate change, refugees and AIDS.
The list includes Africa, Ageing, AIDS, Africa, Atomic Energy, Big Data for the Sustainable Development Goals, Children, Climate Change, Decolonization, Democracy, Food, Health, Human Rights, International Law and Justice, Oceans and the Law of the Sea, Peace and Security, Population, Refugees, Water, and Women.
While some of these are related solving problems of poverty and malnutrition in the Developing World, many are also related to solving these two problems for many of the people in the Developed World.
They also cover many issues only partially linked to poverty and malnutrition. A description of these challenges can be found at the two listed United Nations site.
http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/global-issues-overview/ (overview)
http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/index.html (in depth)
A look at the Millennial Development goals of 2015 gives a more detailed view of the extent of the problems and the interrelatedness of the problems. It is this interrelatedness which makes progress on any one goal difficult.
Millennial Development Goals
A report on the progress of the Millennial Development Goals up to 2015 can found at
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20Summary%20web_english.pdf
All these activities compete for financing and workers.
However there are also many other needs and wants competing for finances.
These include:
- Inequality in the Developed World
- An increasing ageing population
- Increased complexity and costs of medical procedures keeping people alive longer and people living for longer with increasing number of medical problems, requiring more treatment and more residential places
- Increasing cost of education with growing debts for tuition in some sectors
- A growing number of retirees who are unable to finance their own retirement – the governments help here to some extent, but retirees are increasingly unable to enjoy the lifestyle they thought they might have
Plus lots of other requirements for funds – such as infrastructure in many countries in the Developed World.
In my next blog I will cover these issues in more depth.
Guns In America
The Constitutional Convention took palce in Philadelphia in 1787.George Washington is credited with overseeing the convention. James Maddison is credited with writing the draft. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and John Adamsn were also involved. Thomas Jefferson was an ambassador in France representing the American government at the time of the French Revolution. He then spent time in England catching up with the philosophers and politicians governing England.
Preamble to the Constitution.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings
of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.
Preamble to the Declaration Of Independence.
(On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress declared America’s independence from Great Britain and converted the thirteen colonies
into the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence’s justification for that break later influenced the language of
the preamble to the Constitution.)
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
As time went by, the rulers realised that certain parts of the constitution needed clarifaction or addition. So amendments were introduced. The first amendment said
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The Second Amendment is one of 10 amendments that form the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791 by the U.S. Congress. Differing interpretations of the amendment—often referred to as the right to bear arms—have fueled a long-running debate over gun control legislation and the rights of individual citizens to buy, own and carry firearms.
The second amendment says:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The thinking behind the second amendment was the observation that some governments had used soldiers to oppress the people. They believed that English history showed that this risk could be reduced by allowing governments to raise armies (consisting of a full-time paid troops) only when there was a foreign threat. For other purposes such as responding to sudden invasions or other emergencies, threats from the native population and civil unrest. These militias consisted of ordinary citizens who provided their own weapons and received some part-time military training. The Constitutional Convention decided that federal governments should have almost unfettered powers to establish peacetime standing armies and to regulate militia. The onset of war did not always allow time to raise and train an army.
The guns at that time were muskets which were slow to load and fire. They were also inaccurate meaning that you had to be within 50 m or so of the enemy to inflict much damage. After the initial shot, it was often easier to engage in hand-to-hand combat than to attempt another shot.
The current laws in America concerning gun ownership were derived from this initial amendment. The various courts, especially the high courts, have had to rule on what this amendment means in today’s society. It would appear that politicians of either persuasion are reluctant to appoint High Court judges no one to oppose gun ownership.
GLOBAL ISSUES
How this blog came to being.
To understand the origin and the themes of this book requires some knowledge of how and why I came to write it. I have no qualifications in economics or politics. What knowledge I have picked up comes from following the various commentators who seek to explain why certain decisions are made in economics and politics, and explore possibilities of a better way of handling the various issues. The books that I have read, on the average, are not extremely technical. They are the type of book that you would find in any large bookstore which as sections on economics and politics.
I retired in 2011. I had worked for the last 40 years as a family doctor in a large city in Australia. During my working life, economics and politics were issues that I follow from afar. The local newspapers, the TV and the radio follow personality politics in great detail. For better or for worse, many of the commentators or print journalists have been involved in politics for decades either as politicians or political journalists. The coverage seems to concentrate on the actors rather than the issues. The knowledge of economics which we obtained from these sources, is presented as a tag on to this political coverage.
Australia, except in terms of trade, seems to be remote from most of the world affairs, that receive extensive coverage in other countries. To get an understanding of the wider issues, the interested party has to turn to overseas news – in both print and television. Most news coverage is partisan, and it takes a while to put together a balanced picture of the debate.
When I retired, I had a vague picture of what retirement might look like. I’d been working fairly long hours for the last few years, and was involved in a number of volunteer activities. I had suffered depression on and off through the years, and I was finding work difficult, both because of depression and burnout. My short-term plan was to have a very low-key holiday, where I could get into a better state of mind, and from there plan my retirement.
Most people, when they come to retirement, have a mental picture of how they are going to spend their time. The financial situation is a major determinant of people’s aspirations. For those with minimal financial reserves, just subsisting might be the only option. Maybe it will be possible for them to involve themselves in various community activities such as adult education, volunteering – whether it be visiting the aged, Meals on Wheels, care of community parks and gardens, or one of the many other opportunities. Some people, especially if they do not have a support network, will withdraw from society, or find their meaning in a daily trip to the club or hotel.
For those people who are financially secure when they retire, maybe some of the activities I have just listed will be part of their long-term plan. But they also have the option of travelling, both locally and abroad, and becoming involved in, or continuing, such activities as golfing, bowling, boating (in my case sailing). Theatre and opera and other cultural pursuits are also available in this situation.
After a few quiet weeks, I was ready to start putting some plans for my retirement into practice. But before I could get anything organized, I started to feel unwell, and as they say, to cut a long story short, I was diagnosed with a chronic but not life-threatening illness. As a result of this illness, I was unable to get travel insurance – no overseas holidays. The other things that up might have done such as sailing, bushwalking, and scuba diving were also off limits.
One does not really specialize in family practice, but you find areas that interest you more than others. Our family has a strong history of depression – I’ve already mentioned something that I experienced from time to time. Treating depression in family practice is not something that attracts majority of doctors. The consultations tend to be long and tedious, and the results are unpredictable. Many people do recover well over months or years, but there are some who will not improve over decade’s, and it can be difficult to maintain enthusiasm with these clients. Often people with depression continue to function reasonably well at work, but they will often withdraw from most of the activities that make life worthwhile, and from engagement with their family. Part of the treatment as well as overcoming the depression, is to map out a pathway that slowly reconnects them with family and with the activities that they have given up on, all with new activities.” Treatment”of retirement of people who lack resources, be they financial or physical involves many of the same steps as re-engaging the depressed client.
The first activities which I tried were own counselling on a crisis line, helping out at the shelter for the homeless, and Bush care. I am not sure that the concept of Bush care is common in other countries. Basically in our cities in Australia we have fairly large tracts of remnant native vegetation in most local government areas. Bush care is run by the local government administration. It has two aims, the first being the maintenance of the native bushland in the best possible condition. The not so obvious aim is that it encourages links within the community. We had about 20 in the group that I was involved with. Some were local residents who were seeking something useful to do, some were committed greenies, some were accumulating hours in their work for the dole obligations, and some were from a local federal government employment service. This latter group were often immigrants whose language was not at the stage to readily give them employment. They came to our group 2 days a week for about six hours a day and most of them were very key they spoke non-stop – at first some of them were very hard to understand, that we all persisted. After 3 to 6 months most of them had very adequate English skills.
Australia is place with many adult education providers who provide training in a wide range of interests at very reasonable cost. The courses cover everything from languages, politics, history, philosophy, cooking, sewing, car maintenance, woodwork et cetera et cetera. They also cover the varying types of graphic art. If someone can’t find an interest among the subjects, they are not trying hard enough. Each local government area keeps a register of most of the social activities that are occurring in the suburbs. Things like film clubs, book clubs, gardening activities, social activities for people with different ages and a variety of disabilities, migrants different cultural and language groupings.
I did try varying forms of graphic art – drawing, acrylics, and watercolours. I really didn’t have any flair for our. Even during my working years, I had done a variety of adult education courses in things such as marine biology navigation, and some language courses, the latter without great success.
Two years ago, I enrolled in a course on “Inequality”. The cause was three hours a week over six weeks and material was corrected to wards and understanding of the current situation in the developing world, especially in Africa. The course also looked at the various attempts to help with the problems of inequality. The presenters challenge was, ”in the affluent world that many of us inhabit, how can we stand back and not doing more to help?”
Initially I sat down to write an essay to clarify my own thoughts on whether this was reasonable question to ask.
Global Issues Overview
As the world’s only truly universal global organization, the United Nations has become the foremost forum to address issues that transcend national boundaries and cannot be resolved by any one country acting alone.
To its initial goals of safeguarding peace, protecting human rights, establishing the framework for international justice and promoting economic and social progress, in the seven decades since its creation the United Nations has added on new challenges, such as climate change, refugees and AIDS.
While conflict resolution and peacekeeping continue to be among its most visible efforts, the UN, along with its specialized agencies, is also engaged in a wide array of activities to improve people’s lives around the world – from disaster relief, through education and advancement of women, to peaceful uses of atomic energy.
The UN system plays a crucial role in coordinating assistance of all kinds — to help Africa help itself. From promoting the development of democratic institutions, to the establishment of peace between warring nations, the UN is present on the ground supporting economic and social development and the promotion and protection of human rights.
The world’s population is ageing: virtually every country in the world is experiencing growth in the number and proportion of older persons in their population. The number of older persons, those aged 60 years or over, has increased substantially in recent years in most countries and regions, and that growth is projected to accelerate in the coming decades.
New HIV infections have fallen by 35% since 2000 (by 58% among children) and AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 42% since the peak in 2004. The global response to HIV has averted 30 million new HIV infections and nearly 8 million AIDS-related deaths since 2000. The UN family has been in the vanguard of this progress.
More than 30 countries worldwide are operating 444 nuclear reactors for electricity generation and 66 new nuclear plants are under construction. In 2014, 13 countries relied on nuclear energy to supply at least one-quarter of their total electricity.
The volume of data in the world is increasing exponentially. New sources of data, new technologies, and new analytical approaches, if applied responsibly, can allow to better monitor progress toward achievement of the SDGs in a way that is both inclusive and fair.
Every child has the right to health, education and protection, and every society has a stake in expanding children’s opportunities in life. Yet, around the world, millions of children are denied a fair chance for no reason other than the country, gender or circumstances into which they are born.
Climate change is one of the major challenges of our time. From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production, to rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale.
The wave of decolonization, which changed the face of the planet, was born with the UN and represents the world body’s first great success. As a result of decolonization many countries became independent and joined the UN.
Democracy is a universally recognized ideal and is one of the core values and principles of the United Nations. Democracy provides an environment for the protection and effective realization of human rights.
About 795 million people in the world were undernourished in 2014–16. That means one in nine people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life. Hunger and malnutrition are in fact the number one risk to health worldwide — greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
The United Nations, since its inception, has been actively involved in promoting and protecting good health worldwide. Leading that effort within the UN system is the World Health Organization (WHO), whose constitution came into force on 7 April 1948.
Promoting respect for human rights is a core purpose of the United Nations and defines its identity as an organization for people around the world. Member States have mandated the Secretary-General and the UN System to help them achieve the standards set out in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The UN continues to promote justice and international law across its three pillars of work: international peace and security, economic and social progress and development, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Life itself arose from the oceans. The ocean is vast, some 72 per cent of the earth’s surface. Not only has the oceans always been a prime source of nourishment for the life it helped generate, but from earliest recorded history it has served for trade and commerce, adventure and discovery.
Saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war was the main motivation for creating the United Nations, whose founders lived through the devastation of two world wars.
In 1950, five years after the founding of the United Nations, world population was estimated at around 2.6 billion people. It reached 5 billion in 1987 and 6 in 1999. In October 2011, the global population was estimated to be 7 billion.
The world is witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record. An unprecedented 59.5 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 20 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.
Fresh water sustains human life and is vital for human health. There is enough fresh water for everyone on Earth. However, due to bad economics or poor infrastructure, millions of people (most of them children) die from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene.
UN support for the rights of women began with the Organization’s founding Charter. Among the purposes of the UN declared in Article 1 is: “To achieve international co-operation in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.”
THE FIFTEEN GLOBAL CHALLENGES.
THE 17 GLOBAL GOALS
https://www.globalgoals.org/ 180218
RETIREMENT
This is one of those annoying articles, where one who is wise by virtue of the fact that they have survived a certain number of years, decides to pass on their acquired wisdom to whoever will listen. It is worth pointing out at the start that it has never been shown that any of the immense volume of this wisdom has ever had any statically significant effect, beneficial or otherwise, on the lucky recipients.
Usually retirement overtakes us in the second half of life unless some tragedy intervenes. What needs to be emphasised is that “the second half of life” is different to the first half of life. Briefly in the first half of life we have ambitions and goals and dreams, which at some stage either fall apart or become much less important, so we relax and go with the flow. This topic has become very widely researched and spoken about in the spiritual and psychological circles. Nietzsche and especially Jung paid attention to it.
A recent blog in the Huffpost gave ten reasons why the second half of life is better than the first:
We are happier.
We know more
We are not bothered by life’s little things.
We have better sex.
We have more money to do stuff.
We do what we want.
We are more comfortable in our own skin.
We believe in ourselves.
We have the best friends.
We get the big picture of life.
It took a bit of research for the author to find all these positives. Yes and some people in retirement do live happily ever after. But what is “happily ever after”?
Some of the lifestyles might be
a couple of games of golf a week and frequent dining out experiences
fulfilling some ambition that had always been on the backburner such writing a book on economics, sailing around the world, studying some topic at SCC or WEA, or going to university as a mature aged student.
multiple overseas trips
taking care of grand kids so offspring can get ahead
volunteering for some cause
Some of these interests may see you through retirement – if the money lasts. Some will lose their appeal after a certain time – an attack of norovirus on the cruise, spending a month in Bali waiting for the volcano to behave, spending 21 days on a Trafalgar tour with a collection of fellow travelers with significant personality disorders, incipient dementia (how often can you return to the lunch time restaurant to retrieve the same wallet?), diabetes or gluten intolerance – it can take 15 minutes every meal (*3*7*21) to order the simplest meal.
Thus, after some time, it is likely that lack of money, lack of health or lack of interest, will curtail the dream lifestyle. The “some time” can be as little as a few days for the hardworking, unimaginative, slightly Asperger man or woman, who has not developed a set of interests and social connections prior to retirement.
When you are treating a patient with depression, you usually have two jobs. The first is to get the subject “undepressed”, which can be very difficult, but most times it will be possible to a greater or lesser extent. Patients with depression often maintain their commitments to the degree to which these are important. For example they will go to work and put enough effort in to the job to avoid the sack. But they will not do the social and hobby things and many of the things that make life worthwhile. Thus the second part of the job, as the depression lifts is to reengage the client in society. Often a difficult job as when the depression is long term, hobbies/social things have been well and truly disengaged from years ago.
The process is very similar in stalled retirement and depression.
TESTING 123
What could the client become interested in – there will be 100 reasons why nothing suits. In Sydney we are lucky, because most local governments see the importance of establishing links in their area. Our local council has a huge folder with dozens of groups advertising their existence – community colleges with dozens of courses, many of which are ongoing; various craft/woodwork groups: men’s sheds; bushwalking, theatre; discussion groups; bushcare and gardening groups; groups for people with mental or physical handicaps.
On the internet, you can find most of these groups, and you can also find volunteering opportunities.
I as well as being an economic tragic am also a closet volunteering tragic. “Closet” because non-volunteers tend to look on volunteers as either lacking something in life, being sanctimoniously virtuous, or having some sort of “issue”. The other response is “aren’t you wonderful” either sarcastically or genuinely – both equally annoying.
All volunteering is done for yourself – you just mightn’t know it.
I spent several years doing bushcare two days a week in an inner city suburb. As well as learning alot about plants and politics, the usual suspects of volunteers – about 20- made the experience more educational than any reality show on TV. The local Centre link office provided a never-ending supply of those who had to do their 16 hours of work for the dole – their understanding of the meaning of life, their ongoing mental health problems, and their interactions with the “other” volunteers was mostly light hearted, but occasionally deep, but always something that could be learned from. The “others” were 1.a group of very green environmentalists, with huge knowledge and some really out there ideas, 2. local citizens trying to stop the greenies doing too much greening and 3. recent immigrants who had to acquire language skills.123
It might seem an odd environment to learn a language, but chatting to other volunteers for 2*8 hours but it really works.
new websites
https://www.pexels.com/
pixabay also has extremely good photos.
Pixabay is a generous site with many free images.
The Journey Begins
Thanks for joining me!
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
John's World Travel 